Dynamic Risk Assessment for Geologic CO2 Sequestration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamic risk assessment framework for geologic CO2 sequestration that reduces uncertainty in risk predictions, improving safety and decision-making at GCS sites.

Contribution

It develops a novel dynamic risk assessment approach and demonstrates its effectiveness on synthetic and real case studies, enhancing risk prediction accuracy.

Findings

Effective uncertainty reduction in risk metrics

Coupling of risk assessment tool with conformance evaluation

Improved safety management in GCS operations

Abstract

At a geologic CO2 sequestration (GCS) site, geologic uncertainty usually leads to large uncertainty in the predictions of properties that influence metrics for leakage risk assessment, such as CO2 saturations and pressures in potentially leaky wellbores, CO2/brine leakage rates, and leakage consequences such as changes in drinking water quality in groundwater aquifers. The large uncertainty in these risk-related system properties and risk metrics can lead to over-conservative risk management decisions to ensure safe operations of GCS sites. The objective of this work is to develop a novel approach based on dynamic risk assessment to effectively reduce the uncertainty in the predicted risk-related system properties and risk metrics. We demonstrate our framework for dynamic risk assessment on two case studies: a 3D synthetic example and a synthetic field example based on the Rock Springs Uplift (RSU) storage site in Wyoming, USA. Results show that the NRAP-Open-IAM risk assessment tool coupled with a conformance evaluation can be used to effectively quantify and reduce the uncertainty in the predictions of risk-related system properties and risk metrics in GCS.