About the Workshop

By any measure, the pace of change is at an all-time high, whether we look at social, economic, technological, demographic or even climatic aspects.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the oil industry.  Big data and machine learning are making inroads,  new forms of energy are on the rise, a skilled workforce is aging, younger workers are increasingly choosing “greener” paths and growing pressure on climate change is fueling concerns over social license to operate.  The net effect is a rapidly growing interest in CCUS, broadly defined as both saline storage and CO2-EOR. CCUS is a key part of the IPCC mitigation plans, governments, including the US, are increasing the tax incentives for geologic storage of CO2 and there is a growing list of major oil companies committing themselves to achieving net-zero emissions.  Large-scale storage will be critical.  Onshore opportunities exist, but in many cases, they are complicated by current land uses, fractured ownership.

Great strides have been made with CO2 injection in the offshore. For example, Equinor operates the Sleipner CO2 storage project in the North Sea, which has been operational since 1996, and Petrobras operates the commercial Lula deep water CO2-EOR project off the coast of Brazil, which has been injecting CO2 since 2011. Underpinned by these successes, Shell, Total and Equinor are currently looking to develop the Northern Lights offshore CO2 storage project in the North Sea, and others are being evaluated, planned and pursued.

The US has long been the pre-eminent deployer of CO2-EOR, with approximately 140 onshore projects supplied by a growing contribution from CO2 captured from industrial sources. In the last decade, a hard look at offshore U.S. oil resources has suggested that there could be a demand of approximately 14 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 for EOR, with an associated large return of more than 15 billion barrels of incremental oil production.  Substantially larger volumes of CO2 could be stored in saline formations as well.

The cost of doing business in the offshore is substantial, which impacts an operator's ability to pursue such capital-intensive projects. Other challenges include the applicability of existing infrastructure, and space limitations for CO2 handling and injection infrastructure, such as recycle facilities, on existing platforms. However, with advancements in subsea equipment and recent deep-water fields being developed to support waterflooding, technology and infrastructure may be at a place where CO2-EOR can be thought of as a logical follow-on to secondary recovery. With financial instruments such as the recently expanded 45Q tax credit for CO2 storage in the US, associated storage operations and stand-alone or follow-on storage applications may increase project profitability.

Offshore CO2-EOR deployment also could have regulatory/political advantages as well. It avoids issues pertaining to underground sources of drinking water, allowing discharge of untreated produced water directly into the ocean, as necessary. Unlike the onshore, it avoids populated areas, and, in the U.S., does not have the same issues with surface, pore space, and mineral rights ownership.

This workshop proposes to gather experts to cover key questions related to geologic characterization, monitoring, field development, risk analysis and management, business models and case studies, as well as policy and regulation. Breakout sessions will discuss the geological, engineering, operational and implementation challenges associated with offshore CO2 storage, for both CO2-EOR and saline storage; the factors influencing decisions regarding infrastructure for offshore CO2 storage, the non-geologic, non-engineering barriers/ challenges to offshore CO2 storage, and what can be done to overcome them; legal framework considerations, beyond those associated just with infrastructure, including their barriers and/or challenges to offshore CO2 storage, and what can be done to overcome them.  Finally, the workshop will attempt to describe the groundwork that is necessary for successful, first-mover CO2 storage projects/pilot projects in the offshore.

Why Attend?

An SPE workshop is a multi-day event that fosters knowledge sharing in an intensive learning experience. It provides brief technical presentations followed by extensive Q&A and discussion.

Staged in an intimate setting, an SPE workshop brings together E&P professionals with common roles and challenges to share ideas that advance both technology and best practices. They provide an environment for frank, open discussion. Press is not invited to attend.

The workshop’s program committee members solicit presentations from top industry professionals. This ensures a robust technical program with presentations that are laser-focused on best practices, lessons learned, and case studies.

What You Receive

​Released copies of the workshop presentations will be available to attendees following the conclusion of the workshop. Speakers do not write formal papers and are not expected to release their presentations for publication.

​Attendees qualify for 1.6 SPE Continuing Education Units (CEU). One CEU equals 10 contact hours of participation. CEUs will be awarded through SPE Professional Development for participation and completion of SPE workshop. A permanent record of a participant's involvement and awarding of CEUs will be maintained by SPE.

 

Remaining consistent with workshop objectives and SPE guidelines, commercialism in presentations will not be permitted. Company logos are used only to indicate the affiliation of the presenter(s).