CARBON CAPTURE,
UTILIZATION & STORAGE

Premier Corex is on the leading edge of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) efforts using our extensive experience and lab capabilities to address the complex geologic challenges facing the successful deployment of CCUS technologies.

Why Does It Matter?

Premier Corex's Response to Climate Change

We are commited to transforming the industry and being part of the clean energy transition.

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    Evolving perspectives on impact of greenhouse gas emissions - Solutions must involve all aspects of production chain for oil & gas.

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    Establishment of the PCX CCUS Taskforce, bringing together industry leaders and veterans of subsurface rock and fluid analysis to optimize workflows and deliver relevant data to CCUS projects.

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    Paris agreement signed by global leaders in 2016 is a commitment to the global community to address climate change.

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    A portfolio of technologies and approvals is needed to address the decarbonization challenge whilst supporting sustainable and competitive industries. Carbon capture utilization and storage play a critical role in this sustainable.

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How Can

Premier Corex Help?

Our areas of focus and advantage:

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    CO2 Sequestration – for the purpose of emission offset and direct carbon storage

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    Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) – using CO2 as an injection fluid to improve reservoir pressure and drive hydrocarbons to nearby production wellbores

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    Gas cycling - for seasonal energy production

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    Modelling flow in the containment strata

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    Geomechanical modelling of the wellbore/zonal isolation with complex thermal phasing

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    Ability to utilize the PCX Sample Library and Texas Tech Core Repository cuttings and core samples to help identify prospective CCUS formations

Premier Corex Service Offerings

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Our CCUS Experience

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    Core analysis and petrographic studies to characterize and quantify the nature of reservoirs and overlying seal units

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    Rock mechanics/geomechanics to help understand mechanical properties of seal strength and help plan reservoir injection operations

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    Fluid analysis to characterize native formation fluids and determine their compatibility with CO2 and other injected fluids. Fluid-fluid and rock-fluid-fluid studies to investigate potential for scaling, wellbore stability, incompatibility, and mineral-fluid reactions

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    Flowrate dependency corefloods to look at the potential for fines mobilization by gaseous or dense phase (supercritical) CO2

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    Operational sequence corefloods to look at drilling/completion/recompletion/injection operations and identify opportunities to maximize injectivity

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    Simulation of thermal cycling at normal reservoir temperature conditions to understand the impact on the rock and wellbore cement when cold fluids are introduced into a warm wellbore

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    Cryogenic Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to look at fluid distribution and wettability alteration.

Similar principles are used in subsurface carbon sequestration and traditional reservoir characterization

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    Understanding the petrophysical, geomechanical, and geologic properties of the injection target formation

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    Identifying the capacity of the overlying seal unit

Subject Matter Experts

Meet Our CCUS Taskforce

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Mike Dix

Petrology and Diagenesis

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Jules Reed

Core Service + EOR

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Ian Patey

Formation Damage

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Harry Rowe, (PhD)

RGG Technical Lead

Example Projects

North America

Berexco/KGS Core Analysis Program

PCX awarded core analysis work component of DOE-Batelle-Berexco-KGS led Midcontinent Stacked Storage Carbon Hub efforts that fall under the CarbonSAFE Initiative of the US Government. Final data and reports will be included in the DOE public record.

This multidisciplinary effort leverages both PCX expertise and intrumentation to provide crucial core analysis data across 800 ft of core spanning 7 formations. Services include Core Processing & Imaging, Routine Core Analysis, Special Core Analysis, Rock Mechanics teesting, and Geochemistry and Geology analyses.

International

Offshore Geological Reservoirs Part I

  • Pilot project looking at storage of carbon dioxide in offshore geological reservoirs
  • Looked at issues around drilling wells, fines movement, and compatibility
  • Results identified potential damage caused by drilling mud, as well as changes to the reservoir caused by injection rate and incompatibility with gas and injection fluids
  • Second project carried out to examine some of these issues

Offshore Geological Reservoirs Part II

  • Built upon initial study to focus in on some key risks
  • These included injection gas causing mobilization of fines (blocking pores), particles blocking pores at the wellbore during injection, and compatibility with the reservoir
  • Utilized specialist reservoir-conditions coreflood simulator and allowed injection of dense phase (supercritical) carbon dioxide
  • Results included showing that particles could harm injection, and that certain fluids that might be injected into the reservoirs(including seawater) had the potential to be highly damaging and impact upon injectability

Additional Projects

Offshore Geological Reservoirs

Offshore Geological Reservoirs Part I

  • Pilot project looking at storage of carbon dioxide in offshore geological reservoirs
  • Looked at issues around drilling wells, fines movement, and compatibility
  • Results identified potential damaging mechanisms
  • Incomplete clean-up of drilling mud blocked pores at the wellbore
  • Injection potentially mobilized fines and blocked pores, reducing injectivity
  • Potential compatibility issues with fluids that would be used in operations
  • Identifying these risks helped with planning
  • A second project was carried out to examine some of the issues further

Offshore Geological Reservoirs Part II (International)

  • Built upon initial study to focus in on some key risks
  • These included injection gas causing mobilization of fines (blocking pores), particles blocking pores at the wellbore during injection, and compatibility with the reservoir
  • Utilized specialist reservoir-conditions coreflood simulator and allowed injection of dense phase (supercritical) carbon dioxide
  • Results showed that particles could harm injection by blocking pores at the wellbore, so filtration or removal of particles was important
  • Certain fluids that might be injected into the reservoirs (including seawater) had the potential to be highly damaging (due to incompatibility) and impact upon injectability
  • Results highlighted issues that would otherwise have not been found until drilling

Gas Storage

Gas Storage Well Study

  • The client was drilling gas storage wells and wanted to look at potential damage and loss of injectivity during this process.
  • Carried out a series of reservoir-conditions corefloodsto look at a range of drilling mud options with gas as the reservoir phase. Geological interpretative techniques were used to identify the source of any damage.
  • The study showed that there was potential for reduced injectivity of gas due to poor clean-up of the mud cake that built up during drilling. The alterations varied by mud type and overbalance pressure, but pores were seen to be restricted close to the wellbore. This shallow damage was potentially removable with treatment, and a candidate acid was examined. The results were seen to improve significantly after treatment.
  • The operator was able to use the results to understand potential issues that could be caused during drilling, compare candidate fluids, and pre-screen a treatment in order to maximise gas injection prior to drilling the wells.

Alternative Energy

Swiss Multi-Well Project

  • The client is investigating the suitability of an underground geological repository for the storage of hazardous waste.
  • Worked on the project both in-country (Switzerland) at the client facility and at our UK laboratory.The services provided included core slabbing, preparation, resinationpolishing and vacuum sealing.
  • The first slabbing cut and resinationstages were carried out in-country using technical staff, equipment and chemicals supplied from Premier COREX.
  • The majority of the rock was very hard and sometimes brittle (claystone, limestone) and was a challenge to cut successfully.
  • The client had exacting standards in the required finish and presentation of the core sections.We managed to meet those requirements.In total 4 boreholes with a combined core length of 873 m were completed successfully

Hazardous Waste Storage

UK Hazardous Waste Storage

  • Evaluation of various materials which would be used in the storage of waste material.
  • Batches of material have been received since 2020.These included cast cements and geopolymers.
  • Premier COREX services included machining of the material into right cylinders, applying adaptor sleeves as need and measuring gas permeability.
  • Each batch turned around in a timely manner and the client was satisfied with the data.A total of 152 samples have been examined in last year.

Mineral trapping

Viking Formation (Canada) Evaluation for Mineral Trapping

  • The Viking formation consists mostly of sandstones, except for the northwestern part where shales dominate. The sandstones of the Viking Formation are saturated with saline water, forming an aquifer.
  • More than 320,000 wells have been drilled in the basin to date, distributed over most of the basin area, which covers more than 900,000 km2
  • Experimental evaluation based on:
    • Long term flow through tests on sandstone and shale formation
    • Wellbore integrity: Plug and Abandonment
    • Caprock integrity
  • FEM evaluation
  • The study shows that the Viking aquifer is a good candidate with high potential CO2storage trapping.
Want to learn more about our experience and what we have to offer?
Contact Our CCUS Team Today!

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