Energy Department awards $7M for geologic storage projects

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy will grant approximately $7 million to two projects to advance associated geologic storage in support of its Carbon Storage Program.

Associated geologic storage is the storage of CO2 in association with enhanced oil recovery or improved gas recovery operations. Carbon storage provides a way to help offset capture, transportation and storage costs, thus accelerating the implementation of geologic storage.

The projects will advance the development of technologies through computational, analytical, bench-scale, and field laboratories study in storage complexes in diverse geologic settings. The technologies will allow for safe, cost-effective, and permanent geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The projects will also seek to develop best practices for commercial implementation of carbon storage technologies.

One of the projects receiving a grant is the Stacked Greenfield and Brownfield ROZ Fairways in the Illinois Basin Geo-Laboratory. The trustees of the University of Illinois will identify economic strategies to co-optimize CO2-EOR and associated storage in stacked, primarily siliciclastic, reservoirs and residual oil zones (ROZs) in the Illinois Basin.

The project will receive $3,455,947 in DOE funding and $917,881-DOE funding.

The other project is the Williston Basin CO2 Field Laboratory. The University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center proposes to establish the Williston Basin CO2 Field Laboratory in the South Central Cut Bank oil field in Montana. The goal is to advance associated storage within the high-priority Williston Basin.

This project will receive $3,495,703 in DOE funding and $873,926 in non-DOE funding.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage these projects.