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An important question for the Carbon Capture, Storage, and Utility program is “can we adequately predict the CO 2 plume migration?” The Sleipner project in the Norwegian North Sea provides more time-lapse seismic monitoring data than any other sites for tracking CO 2 plume development, but significant uncertainties still exist for some reservoir parameters. In order to simulate CO 2 plume migration and assess model uncertainties, we applied two multi-phase compositional simulators to the Sleipner Benchmark model for the uppermost layer (Layer 9) of the Utsira Sand and calibrated our model against the time-lapsed seismic monitoring data at the site from 1999 to 2010. Approximate match with the observed plume was achieved by introducing lateral permeability anisotropy, CH 4 in the CO 2 stream, and adjusting reservoir temperatures. Model-predicted gas saturation, thickness of the CO 2 accumulation, and CO 2 solubility in brine – none of them used as calibration metrics – were all comparable with interpretations of the seismic data in the literature. Hundreds of simulations of parameter sensitivity (pressure, temperature, feeders, spill rates, relative permeability curves, and CH 4 ) showed that simulated plume extents are sensitive to permeability anisotropy, temperature, and CH 4 but not sensitive to the other analyzed parameters. However, adjusting a single parameter within the reported range of values would not reproduce the north–south trending CO 2 plume. It took a combination of permeability, CH 4 , and temperature adjustments to match simulated CO 2 plume with seismic monitoring data. On the other hand, even with a range of uncertain modeling parameters, the predicted fate of CO 2 fell within a narrow band, ∼93 ± 2% structural/hydrodynamic trapping and ∼7 ± 2% solubility trapping. The calibrated model is not unique. Other possibilities for reproducing the elongated plume such as a slight tilting of the caprock surface to the south and subtle geological features in the Layer 9 were not experimented with in this study, but are worthy of exploration for future studies. While it appears that we were able to reproduce the north–south elongated CO 2 plume, which is a modest improvement over previous models, the adjustments of parameters need to be verified with new observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper is addressed to the TOUGH2 user community. It presents a new tool for handling simulations run with the TOUGH2 code with specific application to CO2 geological storage. This tool is composed of separate FORTRAN subroutines (or modules) that can be run independently, using input and output files in ASCII format for TOUGH2. These modules have been developed specifically for modeling of carbon dioxide geological storage and their use with TOUGH2 and the Equation of State module ECO2N, dedicated to CO2–water–salt mixture systems, with TOUGHREACT, which is an adaptation of TOUGH2 with ECO2N and geochemical fluid–rock interactions, and with TOUGH2 and the EOS7C module dedicated to CO2–CH4 gas mixture is described. The objective is to save time for the pre-processing, execution and visualization of complex geometry for geological system representation. The workflow is rapid and user-friendly and future implementation to other TOUGH2 EOS modules for other contexts (e.g. nuclear waste disposal, geothermal production) is straightforward. Three examples are shown for validation: (i) leakage of CO2 up through an abandoned well; (ii) 3D reactive transport modeling of CO2 in a sandy aquifer formation in the Sleipner gas Field, (North Sea, Norway); and (iii) an estimation of enhanced gas recovery technology using CO2 as the injected and stored gas to produce methane in the K12B Gas Field (North Sea, Denmark). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The development of an interpolation technique for reducing the computational run time associated with the numerical simulation of highly turbulent two-phase flow such as that following the rupture of pressurized pipelines is described. The model is validated by comparison against the results of the pipeline rupture tests conducted by BP and Shell Oil on the Isle of Grain as well as intact end pressure data relating to the MCP-01 riser rupture recorded during the Piper Alpha tragedy. Apart from producing good agreement with the measured data, significant (ca. five-fold) reduction in the computation run time is obtained as a result of the introduction of the interpolation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the datasets of multicomponent survey by WesternGeco in the North Sea. Illustration of the use of P-waves; Illumination of Eocene sands using Chestnut 4C dataset; Improvement of resolution of the reservoir.