The U.S. Department of Energy is putting $21.3 million over three years into the initiatives described below in the hope of developing the technology and infrastructure for large-scale CO2 storage in different geological formations across the US. They will complement existing activities that include injectivity of CO2 into the reservoir, plume migration and containment by caprock and other trapping mechanisms.

Updated by Staff

Currently, geological storage takes five forms – depleted oil and gas reservoirs; deep saline formations; oil- and gas-rich organic shales; basalts; and unmineable coal seams.

The projects selected are:

- Advanced Resources International – Based in Arlington, VA, it will assess factors influencing CO2 storage capacity and injectivity in Eastern gas shales. It receives $1,345,541 over 24 months.

- Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, CA) – Picks up $1,147,612 over 36 months to investigate the feasibility of geological CO2 sequestration in depleted shale gas reservoirs.

- Clemson University – From South Carolina, the university researchers will aim to improve the characterisation of reservoir and caprock compressibility and pressure-dependent permeability with $449,209 over 36 months.

- Colorado School of Mines – Based in Golden, Colorado, it aims to improve the understanding of CO2 trapping mechanisms affected by formation heterogeneity with $510,752 over 36 months.

- Fusion Petroleum Technologies – From Woodlands, Texas, this project picks up $780,185 over 18 months to evaluate experimental design/response surface methods and optimise methods and the operation of a saline formation site.

- Montana State University – A total of $1,599,385 has been awarded to the Bozemon, Montana, project that will develop a biomineralisation based technology for sealing preferential flow pathways.

- New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology – Based in Socorro, New Mexico, researchers will assess caprock/reservoir interfaces with $399,479 over 36 months.

- Paulsson, Inc – From Brea, California, this study’s objective is to develop a reservoir assessment tool based on robust borehole seismic technology with $1,995,682 over 24 months.

- Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York – With $1,015,180 they will test and evaluate carbon-14 as a reactive tracer to assess the transportation of CO2 in a basaltic storage reservoir.

- Trustees of Indiana University: Based in Bloomington, Indiana, researchers will receive $401,042 over 36 months to develop a reservoir-scale multi-phase reactive flow model for CO2 plume migration as well as for the dynamic evolution of trapping mechanisms within the Sleipner Project in the North Sea.

- University of Kansas Centre for Research, Inc: A total of $1,598,536 over 36 months will go towards the evaluation of the effectiveness of the volume seismic tool that assesses reservoirs.

- University of Texas at Austin: Will benefit from two projects – the first sees $1,002,633 awarded to develop a prototype of a new computational approach to assess plume migration over 36 months; and the second sees $425,345 go towards complete simulations and experiments for assessing capillary trapping in reservoirs over 24 months.

- University of Wyoming: Benefits from $1,508,198 over 36 months to study the storage of super-critical CO2 and co-contaminants in deep saline formations in Wyoming.

- Yale University: Based in New Haven, Connecticut, it will look at basic questions about the chemical and mechanical processes that must occur in basalt reservoirs with $1,597,187 over 36 months