Abstract

A future “CO₂ economy” will likely involve a network of pipelines connecting CO₂ sources with users and storage facilities. Pipelines are the safest and most economical means for transporting liquids long distances. Current CO₂ pipelines in Kansas transport CO₂ from an oil refinery in Coffeyville to oil fields in Oklahoma and from an ethanol plant in Garden City to Stewart Oil Field in Kansas. There are hubs for oil pipelines in Cushing, Oklahoma, and for natural gas at the Henry Hub, Louisiana. At these hubs, several pipelines cross and storage facilities exist to manage shipments. No hub has yet been established for CO₂ pipelines. Kansas’s central location between CO₂ producers and storage sites makes it an ideal location for such a hub to be sited. In addition, Kansas petroleum producers can use CO₂ to enhance oil production.

The Phase II Integrated Midcontinent Stacked Carbon Storage Hub (IMSCS-HUB) is part of the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) established by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). CarbonSAFE was established to support the development of an integrated, commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) complex.

Hartland-Patterson site in southwestern Kansas was selected as a primary CO₂ sink site due to great potential for commercial-scale CO₂ storage capacity in saline aquifers and through EOR (Fig. 1). Two major reverse faults define the Hartland-Patterson site These faults offset the reservoir and seal intervals and constitute an uplifted block in the Patterson area. Identified three- and four-way structural closures at the Patterson Site will assist trapping CO₂ in the Arbuckle-Osage reservoirs. After an integration of existing subsurface data from an iCKan CarbonSAFE Phase I project and analysis of new site-specific data we conclude that Hartland-Patterson structure is capable of storing more than 200M tons of CO₂.

Newly acquired subsurface data consist of (1) state of the art logging program for two new characterization wells; (2) 3D seismic survey area that covers entire site; (3) 778 ft of core from sealing and reservoir units and crystalline basement; (4) step-rate, falloff, interference, and drill stem tests from target reservoirs and crystalline basement; and (5) the data obtained from seismometer array. Newly acquired data was analyzed using conventional methods, volatile analysis service (VAS) CO₂ analyses of cuttings, and other techniques. New findings were integrated into reservoir models and simulations to update storage capacity, develop area of review (AoR) minimization strategies, and optimize stacked-storage monitoring strategies.