Adapting Oilfield Operational Strategies for Optimizing Injectivity in Complex CCS Systems – A Scoping Study

With increased commercial interest in geologic CO2 sequestration and 45Q-related activities in the United States, the Midwest Regional Carbon Initiative (MRCI) includes a pertinent evaluation of stimulation strategies for enhancing well injectivity and storage efficiency. This could open significant additional resource potential to the existing onshore storage options by leveraging several complex or seemingly ‘lower quality’ reservoirs found throughout the MRCI region that could potentially be cost-effective compared to ultra-deep targets to support carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects. This manuscript discusses innovative scenario analyses of different well configurations and operational strategies adapted from oil and gas industry practices to identify potential optimal storage solutions and their impacts on CO2 injectivity and storage efficiency. A scoping evaluation for preliminary insights into specific injection strategies in complex systems including naturally fractured reservoirs for their impacts on CO2 injectivity and storage efficiency is conducted using simplified representative sites for CO2 storage. The scoping simulations provide a framework to inform optimal storage solutions for the MRCI region that can be investigated further during the subsequent detailed design phase of analogous sites.