Influence of shale-total organic content on CO2 geo-storage potential

Muhammad Arif, Maxim Lebedev, Ahmed Barifcani, Stefan Iglauer

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    125 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Shale CO2 wettability is a key factor which determines the structural trapping capacity of a caprock. However, the influence of shale-total organic content (TOC) on wettability (and thus on storage potential) has not been evaluated despite the fact that naturally occurring shale formations can vary dramatically in TOC, and that even minute TOC strongly affects storage capacities and containment security. Thus, there is a serious lack of understanding in terms of how shale, with varying organic content, performs in a CO2 geo-storage context. We demonstrate here that CO2-wettability scales with shale-TOC at storage conditions, and we propose that if TOC is low, shale is suitable as a caprock in conventional structural trapping scenarios, while if TOC is ultrahigh to medium, the shale itself is suitable as a storage medium (via adsorption trapping after CO2 injection through fractured horizontal wells).

    Original languageBritish English
    Pages (from-to)8769-8775
    Number of pages7
    JournalGeophysical Research Letters
    Volume44
    Issue number17
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 16 Sep 2017

    Keywords

    • CO storage
    • shale-TOC
    • wettability

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