Through Phase I, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), under Randy Lee, with assistance from the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) at the University of Wyoming, under Jeff Hamerlinck, served as the lead for geologic carbon sequestration evaluations and provision of geologic data to the Big Sky Carbon Data Libraries. Geologic sequestration potential was assessed for sedimentary and volcanic basins including deep saline aquifers, depleted oil/gas reservoirs, deep unminable coal beds, and mafic-rock hosted fresh acquifers. The INL also evaluated the sequestration potential of the large traditional hydrocarbon basins located in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Additionally, they developed a procedure to evaluate the non-traditional volcanic basin plays found in southern Idaho.
The overall approach for assessing regional geologic carbon sequestration potential incorporated geospatial and tabular data within a GIS. Initial GIS-based modeling of the oil and gas regions of Montana and Wyoming was conducted to characterize the suitability of each candidate site with respect to its carbon dioxide sequestration potential. The structure of the spatial database was developed to expedite the flow of critical information into these geochemical and reservoir modeling activities (Fig.1). The modeling approach included isolating individual oil and gas wells – first by play area, then by formation within each play. Calculations were then performed using tabular well data, resulting in data surfaces and stand-alone tables for pressure, temperature, density, and thickness. Using this resulting information, sequestration volumes have been projected for 283 formations in 57 plays using data from approximately 50,000 wells in Montana and 117,304 active wells in Wyoming. A schema of the model is shown in Fig.2.
Figure 1. Big Sky GIS database structure for plays, wells, and geologic formations.*
Figure 2. Big Sky carbon sequestration volume model.*
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