CO₂ storage in depleted gas reservoirs: A study on the effect of residual gas saturation

Abstract

Depleted gas reservoirs are recognized as the most promising candidate for carbon dioxide storage. Primary gas production followed by injection of carbon dioxide after depletion is the strategy adopted for secondary gas recovery and storage practices. This strategy, however, depends on the injection strategy, reservoir characteristics and operational parameters. There have been many studies to-date discussing critical factors influencing the storage performance in depleted gas reservoirs while little attention was given to the effect of residual gas. In this paper, an attempt was made to highlight the importance of residual gas on the capacity, injectivity, reservoir pressurization, and trapping mechanisms of storage sites through the use of numerical simulation. The results obtained indicated that the storage performance is proportionally linked to the amount of residual gas in the medium and reservoirs with low residual fluids are a better choice for storage purposes. Therefore, it would be wise to perform the secondary recovery before storage in order to have the least amount of residual gas in the medium. Although the results of this study are useful to screen depleted gas reservoirs for the storage purpose, more studies are required to confirm the finding presented in this paper.

Keywords

CO₂ storage / Dry gas reservoir / Long term reservoir simulation / Residual gas saturation

Acknowledgments

The Authors would like to acknowledge “Curtin University Sarawak Malaysia” to Fund this research through the Curtin Sarawak Research Institute (CSRI) Flagship scheme under the grant number CSRI-6015. The static modeling data of Juanes Research Group (JRG), Massachusetts Institute of Technology used for the purpose of this study is also acknowledged. Schlumberger Malaysia is also appreciated for providing us with the Eclipse Reservoir Simulation (E300) license.

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