Economic Potential of DACCS and Global CCS Progress
5.6 EVOLUTION OF STORAGE
The rate of carbon dioxide storage, currently with a capacity of around 40 million tonnes
per year must grow to billions of tonnes per year to meet climate targets. Historically,
most CO2 has been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Whilst effectively all CO2
injected for EOR is ultimately permanently trapped in the pore space that previously
held the oil, the majority of future storage will not be associated with EOR.
The historic dominance of CO2 stored through EOR is understandable given the CCS
industry was born out of EOR in the US. These facilities showed that million-tonne CO2
injection rates at multimillion-tonne storage sites were possible. Importantly, monitoring
confirms that all the CO2 injected is ultimately stored. This monitoring has laid the
foundation for CCS to become a critical climate change technology.
Today, deep saline formations are the most common type of CO2 storage reservoir
across all storage facilities (over 150) at all stages of development from operational
through to early development phases, and including completed facilities (Figure 25).
CCS deployment is expanding with a greater diversity of geographies and storage
targets. CO2 storage facilities targeting deep saline formations are most substantial in
North America and the North Sea. Storage in depleted oil fields is also set to become
more common, for example in the UK and in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Storage in deep saline aquifers is increasing in frequency whilst storage through EOR is
decreasing in frequency. This is clearly evident in Figure 26 particularly for projects in
advanced development where the ratio of projects storing in saline aquifers to projects
storing through EOR or depleted oil and gas fields is more than 6 to 1. A preference for
deep saline formations over depleted oil and gas fields is an interesting development.
Historically, the expectation was that the low-cost, fast-to-develop depleted fields
would be targeted first. But new project most commonly target deep saline formations.
This is occurring in both North America and a lesser extent in Europe (Figure 25).
Two reasons emerge for this choice. First, CCS networks that dominate the development
pipeline focus on deep saline formations; those networks have multimillion-tonne-per-
annum injection rates. Second, the pipeline includes a substantial portion of facilities
from the US and the North Sea (UK and Europe). Both these regions have access to
volumetrically significant (over 1,000 Mt), high-quality deep saline formations as their
nearest and therefore first option for storage.
Enhanced oil recovery
Under Evaluation
Deep Saline Formation
Depleted Oil and Gas Reservoir
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
COUNT OF CCS FACILITIES INCLUDING DEMONSTRATION AND
COMMERCIAL FACILITIES (over 100,000 tpa)
AFRICA
NORTH AMERICA
ASIA PACIFIC
SOUTH AMERICA
EUROPE
MIDDLE EAST
0
FIGURE 24: COUNT OF COMPLETED, CURRENT AND FUTURE CO₂ STORAGE PROJECTS ACROSS STORAGE
TYPES AND GEOGRAPHIES. DATA DERIVED FROM OVER 150 CCS FACILITIES, INCLUDING COMMERCIAL AND
DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS (OVER 100,000 TPA CO₂) ACROSS ALL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT.
80
There is clear evidence in comparing operational facilities today with the pipeline in the
future, that there is a greater diversity of storage targets. Depleted fields are significant
to future project development, mainly in the UK North Sea. In addition, the EOR pipeline
is still growing, particularly in the US and Middle East.
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GLOBAL CCS
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