Publications

Natural helium as a screening tool for assessing caprock imperfections at geologic CO2 storage sites

Heath, Jason; McPherson, Brian; Phillips, Fred; Cooper, Scott; Dewers, Thomas D.

Natural helium is a screening tool for identifying the presence or absence of caprock imperfections. Imperfections can be manifested as a variety of features or processes, including insufficiently low permeability, preferential flowpaths such as fractures and faults, and the propensity for capillary breakthrough. Theory and simulations detail how various types of imperfections affect the spatial distribution of natural helium above, within, and below caprock in a single-phase, brine-saturated system. Specifically, the distribution of natural helium can reveal the presence of preferential flowpaths through formations with low matrix permeability. The distribution patterns of helium shed insight on the size, shape, location, and connectedness of imperfections in caprock. We show how imperfections associated with characteristic distributions of natural helium will affect the retention of CO2. We discuss the advantages of natural helium, together with temperature distributions, for revealing imperfections and the optimum locations for sampling the natural tracers. This research is being carried out to support design and interpretation of ongoing field-testing by the Southwest Regional Partnership on Carbon Sequestration. Specifically, we are evaluating seal integrity of the Partnership's Pump Canyon Enhanced Coalbed Methane- CO2 Storage Demonstration, located in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico. The caprock at this site is the Kirtland Formation. This formation is composed of a variety of continental deposits (sandstones, siltstones, mudrocks, and shales) and is ideal for investigating the capability of helium to characterize sealing integrity of a very heterogeneous caprock. We present results of analyses of noble gases and a variety of petrological and petrophysical analyses on core through this caprock. These results are used to investigate the presence of imperfections and their potential impact on CO2 migration and the overall viability of utilizing natural helium as a screening tool. The authors gratefully acknowledge the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory for sponsoring this project. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.