Offshore staff
EDINBURGH, UK – Gas fields in the UK southern North Sea are the focus of a new Heriot-Watt University study concerning potential subsurface carbon storage sites.
The program has funding from the Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) in Aberdeen, with support from the UK’s Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), offshore operators, and various data owners.
Professor John Underhill at Heriot-Watt said: “The southern North Sea faces three of some of the UK’s largest carbon emission areas: the industrial hubs of Teesside, Humberside, and the Thames estuary. It also has a number of depleted gas fields that could be repurposed to store carbon.
“We are going to systematically examine the geology of these sites and determine which critical factors allow carbon to be safely stored over long, geological timescales.”
Plans include devising a roadmap for other sites by mapping the geological features and their carbon storage potential, and identifying the optimum locations and any potential leakage points.
In addition, the team will undertake accurate mapping of the overburden in order to develop mitigation strategies and early warning systems for any carbon escape or seepage.
They will use data from the OGA’s National Data Repository concerning UK fields and infrastructure, made accessible for the first time in 2019.
Underhill stressed the need to select the right sites, in the most logical order, and understand the total volume of carbon that could be stored.
“We must do this correctly and on a large scale. We won’t get a second chance to get this right, as all credibility will be lost if leakage takes place from a poorly-selected site.”
02/13/2020
