QICS Work Package 1: migration and trapping of CO2 from a reservoir to the seabed or land surface

Natural CO2 seeps can be used as analogues for studies into surface flux and impact resulting from leaking engineered geological CO2 reservoirs. However their long-lived nature often means that the local environment has either adapted or evolvedaround the seepage site. The ‘Quantifying Impact of carbon storage’ (QICS) experiment provides the solution to this issue by releasing CO2 into an environment previously untouched by CO2. Work Package 1 (WP1) of the QICS project is primarily concerned with the migration of CO2 in the subsurface and how to relate the results of the relatively shallow experiment to a full storage scale setting in the UK North Sea. The main objectives of WP1 are to investigate potential leakage pathways from the reservoir to the surface, determine possible leakage rates and assess the potential volumes of leaked CO2 that can reach the surface environment.