Calculation of pressure- and migration-constrained dynamic CO2 storage capacity of the North Sea Forties and Nelson dome structures

This paper presents a numerical simulation study of CO2 injection into the Forties and Nelson dome structures in the North Sea. The study assumes that these structures are fully depleted of their remaining hydrocarbon and brine has replaced their pore space, and therefore the structures can be treated as saline aquifers. Under this assumption, the objective is to calculate the dynamic CO2 storage capacity of the Forties and Nelson structures and design an injection scenario to enhance storage utilisation. In doing so, first, a detailed geological model of the dome structures and their surrounding aquifer is developed to represent the lithological facies associations and attribute them with petrophysical properties. The geological model is calibrated in terms of the surrounding aquifer support using the hydrocarbon production data. The dynamic storage capacity is subsequently estimated by numerical simulation of the two-phase (brine and CO2) process. Key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the pressure build-up and regional mass fraction of CO2, are used to constrain the injection scenarios that consequently result in the best capacity utilisation of the storage structures. In our model of fully brine saturated dome structures, based on specific constraints, namely <0.1% of the total gaseous CO2 outside the dome into an upper pressure unit and 66% of the initial hydrostatic pressure as the allowable increase in the bottom-hole pressure, we obtained a dynamic capacity of 121 million tonnes for the Forties structure and 24 million tonnes for the Nelson structure. These values are subject to change when a three phase model of residual oil, gas and water is considered in simulations.