Geologically Storing Carbon - Learning From The Otway Project Experience

Geologically Storing Carbon: Learning from the Otway Project Experience, provides a detailed account of the CO2CRC Otway Project in Australia, one of the most comprehensive pilot CO2 storage projects undertaken to date. The Otway Project has involved a series of CO2 injections, field experiments and monitoring programmes extending over several years. Many of the scientific results have already been published, but what has not been published for Otway (or for most other such projects), has been the detail of how things were done and why. It is this detail which is particularly important to others who are starting down the road of developing a CCS project whether at a small or large scale, or understanding how the technology works.

The book describes the organizational, governance and decision-making processes that were used. It outlines how the storage site was chosen and what was done to prove its suitability. It also describes how and why the project went about securing a source of CO2 and the various options for processing the gas. Ensuring that the site is geomechanically suitable was important in taking the project forward and this is also outlined, as is also the process of risk assessment used by the project. A major program of scientific investigation was undertaken, which involved activities as diverse as obtaining fluids from 2km down a well and 500m in a water well; sampling a few centimetres in the soil and sampling in the atmosphere. How the samples were obtained and how they were analysed is also described in some detail. Monitoring and verification was critical to the Project and a wide range of methods were employed; some methods worked well but others did not and the book provides guidance on this. It also outlines how results were processed and interpreted. However it is not just the technical details that are provided: How the Project was regulated is instructive for other projects, as is also the experience of the Project in successfully communicating with the local community and the community at large. And what did it all cost and where did the funding come from?

All this information, acquired during the conduct of the Otway Project and involving the spending of tens of millions of dollars, is relevant to other CCS projects that are under development or planned. It is hoped that the book will enable future CCS projects at all scales to progress more efficiently, more cost-effectively and more speedily.