Carbon Dioxide Storage and Sequestration in Unconventional Shale Reservoirs

S. Sina Hosseini Boosari¹, Umut Aybar², Mohammad O. Eshkalak^2*

¹West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA.
²Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/gep.2015.31002                

Abstract

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) storage and sequestration in unconventional shale resources has been attracting interest since last couple of years due to the very unique characteristics of such formations have made them a feasible option for this object. Shale formations are found all around the world and the conventional assets are easily accessible, and also the huge move of operators toward developing unconventional reservoirs during past years leaves many of such formations ready for sequestering CO₂. Today, the use of long horizontal wells that are drilled on a pad has the lowest amount of environmental footprint in which for storage and sequestration purpose also provides much more underground pore spaces available for CO₂. In this paper we study the state of the art of the technology of CO₂ storage and sequestration and provide different and fresh look for its complex phenomena from a mathematical modeling point of view. Moreover, we hope this study provides valuable insights into the use of depleted shale gas reservoirs for carbon sequestration, which as a result, a cleaner atmosphere will be achieved for the life of our next generations. Also, we present that the depleted shale gas reservoirs are very adequate for this purpose as they already have much of the infrastructure required to perform CO₂ injection available in sites.

Keywords

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration, Shale Reservoirs, Modeling and Simulation, Clean Environment

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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