The PCOR Partnership Initiative: The State of the Region

Abstract

The PCOR Initiative, a 5-year project beginning in early 2020, is one of four newly selected regional initiative awards funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The PCOR Initiative will accelerate the deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) in the central and northwestern region of North America, comprising ten U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. With extensive fossil fuel resources, large-scale anthropogenic CO2 sources, and geologic storage options, this region provides all of the essential elements necessary for infrastructure development and widespread CCUS deployment. The project builds on 16 years of applied research undertaken by the Plains CO2 Reduction (PCOR) Partnership throughout the northern Great Plains, including the successful assessment and monitoring of over 6 million metric tons of associated CO2 storage, incidental to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations at the Bell Creek oil field in southeastrn Montana. Managed by the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the PCOR Initiative is supported by the North Dakota Industrial Commission, through the Oil and Gas and Lignite Research Programs, and by research partners at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the University of Wyoming. Many of the 120+ previous PCOR Partnership member organizations are supporting this new initiative, with additional members also expected. Our team also includes the partners associated with Project Tundra, which constitutes the largest planned capture of CO2 in the world from a power generation facility. With many partners actively engaged in commercial projects, the PCOR Initiative draws together a powerful team to advance and accelerate CCUS deployment in the region and satisfy the objectives put forth by DOE. The PCOR Initiative will identify and address onshore regional storage and transport challenges facing commercial deployment of CCUS within its region. To achieve this, the PCOR Initiative will 1) address key technical challenges by advancing critical knowledge and capabilities; 2) facilitate data collection, sharing, analysis, and collaboration; 3) evaluate regional infrastructure challenges and needs; and 4) promote regional technology transfer. The PCOR Initiative will engage federal and state regulators in the region to support the continued development and knowledge transfer of regulatory policies to accelerate the deployment of CCUS. The regulatory efforts will focus on understanding the federal and state permitting processes and timing and address major regulatory topics, including pore space ownership, practical approaches to defining the area of review, and management of the long-term liability associated with a closed storage site. The PCOR Initiative will facilitate dialogue regarding the status of CCUS projects and regulatory challenges, with an emphasis on knowledge transfer between states with active CCUS projects and Class VI primacy and states with less CCUS development and no CCUS regulations established. North Dakota is the only state currently with Class VI primacy, and Wyoming has a pending Class VI primacy application. These states can provide valuable insight to other states by sharing their learnings from the Class VI primacy application process and Class VI regulatory program implementation at the state level. The expected outcomes of the PCOR Initiative include: • Solving technical challenges through collaboration, and addressing issues including stacked storage; storage optimization; effective monitoring, verification, and accounting strategies; and risk assessment resulting in increased regulator and industry confidence. • Advancing knowledge transfer and data sharing to develop key technologies, including National Risk Assessment Partnership tools and machine-learning applications, through collaboration with the DOE National Laboratory Network complex. • Accelerating CCUS through the evaluation and promotion of infrastructure requirements, building stakeholder support through techno- and socioeconomic assessments. • Promoting regional technology transfer to accelerate infrastructure development and deployment of CCUS, and building regulatory confidence and supporting business case developments that support the CCUS goals of the DOE Fossil Energy Program.