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The University of Alabama, Geological Survey of Alabama, and Rice University have assessed the CO2storage potential in the Black Warrior Basin. Roughly 28 million metric tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere annually by two pulverized coal power plants located in the basin, providing a need to determine the geological storage resources for potential CCS in the Black Warrior Basin. The project team has characterized a test site located near one of those power plants, the Alabama Power Company’s William C. Gorgas plant. The effort included designing and developing a geologic test wellbore, determining the suitability of the site for storage, and performing a computational simulation of the reservoir. As part of the characterization activities, the team is evaluating a formation stratigraphic, dissolution, and mineralization containment analysis that defines the ability of the formation to contain CO2. The project team also analyzed geophysical well logs, seismic surveys, and core data to define the CO2 acceptance and storage capability of the stacked saline reservoirs.
The overall effort provides greater insight into the potential for geologic formations across the United States to safely and permanently store CO2. The information gained from this endeavor is furthering DOE efforts to refine a national assessment of CO2 storage resources in deep geologic formations. Particularly, the study is helping to characterize the ability of the Black Warrior Basin saline formations and hydrocarbon reservoirs to accept and retain significant volumes of CO2 from point emission sources in the region.
