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Petroleum Recovery Research Center A Division ofNew Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology801 Leroy PlaceSocorro, NM 87801
Address Service Requested
MNon-Profit Organization
U.S. PostagePaid
Socorro, NMPERMIT NO. 9
New Mexico Institute of Mining and TechnologyDaniel H. López, President
Board of RegentsEx Officio
Susana Martinez, Governor of New MexicoDr. Jose J. Garcia, Secretary of Higher Education
AppointedRichard N. Carpenter, Santa Fe, President, Santa Fe
Jerry A. Armijo, SocorroDeborah Peacock, Corrales
Deborah Hicks, HobbsIsrael Rodriguez-Rios, Student Regent, Socorro
Petroleum Recovery Research CenterRobert Lee, Director
Senior StaffRobert Balch, Research ScientistJill S. Buckley, Senior Scientist
Martha Cather, Industrial Technology CoordinatorReid B. Grigg, Senior Engineer
Ning Liu, Research ScientistRandall S. Seright, Senior Engineer
PRRC Publications OfficeLiz Bustamante, Editor
This newsletter is produced by the PRRC Publications Office. Views expressed are those of the PRRC staff. Submissions and letters to the editor are welcome. Reprints from the PRRC Review are permitted, provided that credit is given to the New Mexico PRRC. Please send two copies of the publication containing the reprint to Liz Bustamante, PRRC, New Mexico Tech, 801 Leroy Place, Socor ro, NM 87801. PHONE: (575) 835-5406. FAX (575) 835-6031. EMAIL: [email protected]. WEBSITE: http://baervan.nmt.edu
Petroleum Recovery Research CenterA Division of New Mexico Tech
The PRRC is a state-supported center that conducts research on improving methods of recovering crude oil and natural gas and that transfers petroleum technology to domestic oil producers. Funding for the PRRC comes from three sources: the State of New Mexico, the federal government (Department of Energy), and private industry.
PRRC
Oil price data from PRRC's OCTANE web-site. Prices are NYMEX, through June 30, 2013.
PRRC Biannual NewsletterVolume 28, No. 2: FALL 2013
The Petroleum Recovery Research Center is a division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
(cont'd, p. 2)
PRRC CCUS PROJECT MOVING FORWARD
Led by the PRRC, a large-scale re-search project in an active Texas enhanced oil recovery operation is moving forward with field activi-ties. The Southwest Regional Part-nership on Carbon Sequestration’s (SWP) carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) deployment phase (Phase III) recently had its project site approved by DOE and a contract signed between the prime, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and its new indus-
of the injection and movement of large amounts of CO2 in an ongo-ing enhanced oil recovery project. Project goals include storage ca-pacity verification and storage per-manence. Selection of this field site was in response to DOE/NETL’s CCUS program objectives, which desire an existing CO2–EOR project in the Southwest Region, one of seven re-gions designated by the DOE in its carbon sequestration program. The SWP sought an active CO2-EOR site for Phase III that would essentially be a field lab for evaluating the efficacy of monitor-ing technologies and for testing and refining forecasts of CO2 be-havior underground. With its new industrial partner, the SWP will gain expert feedback from an ex-perienced company who offers tan-gible insight into industry priori-ties and concerns with CCUS. The SWP is verifying technologies that will support our industry partner's ability to predict and confirm CO2 storage capacity in geologic forma-tions. The SWP commends the environmentally-conscious CO2-EOR work of CELLC; in particu-lar, CELLC is using anthropogenic CO2 for EOR in the FWU. In this project, CO2 that is an industrial byproduct from an ethanol plant in
trial partner, Chaparral Energy, LLC (CELLC). Chaparral Energy is an inde-pendent oil and gas producer and operator headquartered in Oklaho-ma City with field offices through-out the south-central US. Chaparral began operating in 1988 and has grown steadily. The company is ex-perienced in CO2-EOR in mature fields. The primary objectives of this project comprise a broadly-defined range of testing and monitoring
Researchers visit the Farnsworth Unit Project site in the Texas panhandle during the SWP Project Review on November 20, 2013. The Unit is part of an active CO2-EOR site operated by SWP's industrial partner, Chaparral Energy, LLC. Photo courtesy of Mark White, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
page 2 pRRC biannual newsletteR page 3 pRRC biannual newsletteR
a division of the new mexiCo institute of mining and teChnology a division of the new mexiCo institute of mining and teChnology
Publications, PresentationsNew Project (cont'd from p. 1) Kansas and a fertilizer plant in Tex-as is being used. The field site for the SWP’s Phase III program is CELLC’s Farnsworth Unit (FWU), Ochiltree County, in the Anadarko Basin of northern Texas. The FWU, covering over 20 square miles, is located in a sparsely populated, fully developed agricultural area with both dry and irrigated farming, where the surface area has been cultivated for many decades. The FWU started development in the mid 1950s; currently, it is part of an existing CO2–EOR proj-ect that started injection December 2010 and will continue to expand for several years. The Farnsworth EOR target is the Morrow formation, an incised valley-fill sandstone that extends from eastern Colorado and western Kansas through Oklahoma into the Texas panhandle. As of 2005, the Morrow had produced more than 100 million barrels of oil and 500 billion cubic feet of gas. A conserva-tive estimate of the Morrow’s CO2 storage capacity within the FWU exceeds 10 million metric tons. The SWP will examine current-ly flooded areas and also establish surface and subsurface monitoring baselines in areas that have not seen CO2; then it will monitor CO2 injec-tion. In addition to the monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) of injected CO2, extensive reservoir characterization and reservoir mod-eling will be performed. The MVA techniques that will be used include analysis of injection rates; production well rates; sam-pling of water, oil, and gas; tracers; groundwater chemistry monitoring;
surface and downhole pressure and temperature; soil gas sampling; re-peat seismic surveys; and other ap-plicable methods. Some field operations began earlier in the year. A 3D surface seismic survey was shot in January and February that covered the entire FWU, for site and reservoir charac-terization, possible CO2 identifica-tion, and calibration of instruments for other seismic tests. Pre-process-ing of the data was finished in June 2013 and interpretation of the data is ongoing. Baseline water and soil measurements for monitoring have also begun.
CCUS and CO2-EORCarbon dioxide flooding has been used by oil producers for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) for the last four decades, using CO2 from both nat-
urally-occurring and anthropogenic sources. In an effort to mitigate green-house gases in the atmosphere, the US DOE has implemented a carbon capture and storage (CCS) program that involves the removal and long-term storage of CO2 from the atmo-sphere. The SWP is one of seven Regional Carbon Storage Partner-ships, established by DOE to ad-dress regional storage approaches for greenhouse gases. Recently, DOE’s carbon cap-ture objective has moved to encom-pass carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), which include the added value of an EOR component. In this way, DOE looks forward to future partnership with research organizations and industry in es-tablishing techniques for the large-scale capture and storage of CO2.
Balch, R. “Cost-Effective Treat-ment of Produced Water Using Co-Produced Energy Sources: Phase II Field Scale Demonstration and Commercialization,” RPSEA Proj-ect No. 11123-03, presented at the RPSEA Onshore Production Con-ference/ TORP Technology Trans-fer Workshop, Wichita, Kansas, June 27, 2013.
Balch, R. “Field Testing and Diag-nostics of Radial-Jet Well-Stimu-lation for Enhanced Oil Recovery from Marginal Reserves,” RPSEA Project 09123-03, presented at the RPSEA Onshore Production Con-ference/ TORP Technology Trans-fer Workshop, Wichita, Kansas, June 27, 2013.
Balch, R., Bell, J., and Will, B. (2013). “Seismic Data Review and Discussion.” Presented at the Southwest Partnership Phase III Kickoff Meeting, April 9-10, 2013, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Esser, R., Liu, N., Grigg, R., and McPherson, B. (2013). “Monitor-ing, Verification and Accounting at the Farnsworth Unit.” Presented at the Southwest Partnership Phase III Kickoff Meeting, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 9–10.
Grigg, R. and McPherson, B. (2013). “Phase III – Deployment Phase, Farnsworth Unit CCUS, Ochiltree, Texas.” Presented at the Southwest Partnership Phase III Kickoff Meet-ing, April 9-10, 2013, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Liu, N. (2013) "Nanoparticle-stabi-lized CO2 Foam for Mobility Control in CO2 EOR." Presented at the 2013 International Symposium on Oilfield Chemistry, Qingdao, China, June 26–28, 2013.
Manichand, R.N., Moe Soe Let, K.P., Gil, L., Quillien, B., and Seright, R.S. (2013). “Effective Propaga-tion of HPAM Solutions through
the Tambaredjo Reservoir during a Polymer Flood.” Paper SPE 164121 presented at the SPE International Symposium on Oilfield Chemistry, The Woodlands,TX. April 8–10. Ye, G. (2013). “A Study of the Ef-fects of Salinity on the Viscosity of a Polymer Solution.” MS thesis, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Tech-nology, Socorro, New Mexico.
Yu, J., Mo, D., Liu, N., and Lee, R. (2013) “The Application of Nanopar-ticle-Stabilized CO2 Foam for Oil Recovery.” Paper SPE 164074 presented at the SPE International Symposium on Oilfield Chemistry, The Woodlands, Texas, April 8–10.
Yota, G. (2013) "Carbon Dioxide Sequestration in Deep Saline Aqui-fers." MS thesis, New Mexico Insti-tute of Mining and Technology, So-corro, New Mexico.
The project is supported and managed by DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory. The Phase III project budget is approximately $83 million, of which about $57M has been committed by the US DOE. The balance will be provided by the participating organizations. The project is a multi-faceted effort by a number of entities. New Mexico Tech is the lead organiza-tion and prime DOE contractor, with Project Director Dr. Robert Lee, Di-rector of the PRRC. Dr. Reid Grigg of the PRRC and Dr. Brian McPher-son of the University of Utah/NMT
are Co-Principal Investigators of the project, who will direct project engineering and project science re-spectively. Other research organizations currently involved in this research project are NETL, Los Alamos Na-tional Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Utah, the Utah Science, Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative, the Utah Geological Survey, the University of Missouri, Oklahoma Geological Survey, and Schlum-berger Carbon Services.
Kickoff MeetingSWP held the FWU Site Kickoff Meeting in Oklahoma City on April 9–10, 2013. The Kickoff Meeting covered site geology, past and pres-ent activities, and the future EOR and monitoring/risk/characteriza-tion/simulation activities.
SWP WebsiteThe new public SWP website went online in January, at http://www.southwestcarbonpartnership.org. The website chronicles the activi-ties of the SWP and provides links to CCUS resources and FAQs. It is administered through NM Tech.
(cont'd, p. 3)
New Project (cont'd from p. 2)
PRRC graduate students at the Farnsworth Site tour: l to r, Paige Czoski (Geophysics), Sara Gallagher (Earth and Environmental Engineering), and Ashley Hutton (Geophysics). Photo courtesy of Mark White, Pacific North-west National Laboratory.
