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Gas reservoirs have significant engineering characteristics of injection and extraction. The reservoir cap rock is subjected to cyclic alternating loading and has the potential risk of seal failure. Therefore, it is necessary to study the stress−percolation−damage mechanism of the reservoir cap rock in depleted gas reservoirs. The rock Mechanics Test System (MTS) was used to study the permeability characteristics of a typical mud shale cap layer under different loading and unloading rates, analyze the deformation characteristics and permeability performance evolution law of the rock under the confining pressure alternation, and study the effects of loading and unloading rate, confining pressure and number of cycles on the permeability of the cap rock. The test results show that with the increase in the number of cycles, the hysteresis loop moves in the direction of axial strain increase offset. The overall morphology is presented as an elongated type, and the damage of the specimen is small in the cyclic confining pressure; At the beginning of the cycling period, the permeability decreases with the increase in the confining pressure in the form of a negative exponential. At the later stage of the cycling period, the permeability basically stays unchanged, and is maintained at a low level; At low confining pressure, permeability also decreases in a negative exponential form with the increase in the number of confining pressure cycles; The greater the loading and unloading rate at the beginning of the cycle, the more the permeability decreases; There is a tendency of sealing improvement under cyclic loading in the gas storage of depleted reservoirs with mud shale as the cap layer. The results of the study can provide technical parameters for the evaluation of the cap sealing of gas storage of depleted reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The good sealing caprocks are significant for the integrity of underground gas storage (UGS) in depleted natural gas reservoirs. The screening of parameters, weight assignment, and evaluation method are important for evaluating the sealing performance of caprocks. Many factors can affect the sealing performance of caprocks, including caprock thickness, lithology, brittleness, porosity and permeability, breakthrough pressure, etc. In this paper, the dominant factors in the sealing performance of caprocks in UGSs are systematically analyzed, and the weights of these factors are analyzed by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (FCEM) is applied in the sealing evaluation of caprocks in three typical underground gas reservoirs (i.e., Zhujiadun, Xu-2, and Xing-9) in China. The sandstone reservoir in the Zhujiadun gas field is only about 20 m, and the thickness of the overlying mudstone is about 600 m. The caprock of the Xu-2 gas reservoir in Zhongba gas field is well distributed and developed, and the breakthrough pressure is relatively large. The caprock of Xing-9 gas field is mudstone with a thickness of over 400 m. The results show that the breakthrough pressure and permeability are the key parameters affecting the sealing ability of caprocks, with weights of 0.4291 and 0.2157, respectively. Among these three examples of gas fields, the sealing performance of caprocks in Zhujiadun gas storage is the best. The evaluation procedure and methods proposed in this paper are valuable for the evaluation of the tightness of caprocks in depleted gas reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current international situation, energy storage is an important means for countries to stabilize their energy supply, of which underground storage of natural gas is an important part. Depleted gas reservoir type underground gas storage (UGS) has become the key type of gas storage to be built by virtue of safety and environmental protection and low cost. The multi-cycle high injection and production rate of natural gas in the depleted gas reservoir type UGS will cause the in-situ stress disturbance. The slip risk of fault in the geological system increases greatly compared with that before the construction of the storage engineering, which becomes a great threat to the sealing of the gas storage. Reasonable injection and production strategy depend on the reliable assessment of the shear behavior of the fault belt, which can guarantee the sealing characteristics of the UGS geological system and the efficient operation of the UGS. Therefore, the shear behavior of the fault is studied by carrying out experiments, which can provide important parameters for the evaluation of fault stability. However, there is a large gap between the rock samples used in the previous experimental study and the natural faults, and it is difficult to reflect the shear failure characteristics of natural faults. In this paper, similar fault models based on high-precision three-dimensional scanners and engraving machines, filled with three types of fault gouge, are prepared for a batch of representative direct shear tests. The results show that the peak shear strength of the fault rocks with a shear surface is higher than that of the fault rocks with a tensile surface. Compared with the clay mineral content, the roughness of the fault surface is much more significant for the shear strength of the fault rock. For the fault rocks with similar fault surface morphology, the higher the clay content in the fault gouge, the greater the shear strength of the fault rocks. For the fault rocks with different fault surface morphology and the same fault gouge, the cohesion and internal friction angle of the tensile type is generally smaller than that of the shear type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studied the CO-EGR in Altmark natural gas field with numerical simulations. The hydro-mechanical coupled simulations were run using a linked simulator TOUGH2MP-FLAC3D. In order to consider the gas mixing process, EOS7C was implemented in TOUGH2MP. A multi-layered 3D model (4.4 km × 2 km × 1 km) which consists of the whole reservoir, caprock and base rock was generated based on a history-matched PETREL model, originally built by GDF SUEZ E&P Deutschland GmbH for Altmark natural gas field. The model is heterogeneous and discretized into 26,015 grid blocks. In the simulation, 100,000 t CO was injected in the reservoir through well S13 within 2 years, while gas was produced from the well S14. Some sensitivity analyses were also carried out. Simulation results show that CO tends to migrate toward the production well S14 along a NW-SE fault. It reached the observation wells S1 and S16 after 2 years, but no breakthrough occurred in the production well. After 2 years of CO injection, the reservoir pressure increased by 2.5 bar, which is beneficial for gas recovery. The largest uplift (1 mm) occurred at the bottom of the caprock. The deformation was small (elastic) and caprock integrity was not affected. With the injection rate doubled the average pressure increased by 5.3 bar. Even then the CO did not reach the production well S14 after 2 years of injection. It could be concluded that the previous flow field was established during the primary gas production history. This former flow field, including CO injection/CH production rate during CO-EGR and fault directions and intensity are the most important factors affecting the CO transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have been identified as the main contributor for global warming and climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered to be the most promising strategy to mitigate the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This review aims to provide the latest developments of CO2 storage from the perspective of improving safety and economics. The mechanisms and strategies of CO2 storage, focusing on their characteristics and current status, are discussed firstly. In the second section, the strategies for assessing and ensuring the security of CO2 storage operations, including the risks assessment approach and monitoring technology associated with CO2 storage, are outlined. In addition, the engineering methods to accelerate CO2 dissolution and mineral carbonation for fixing the mobile CO2 are also compared within the second section. The third part focuses on the strategies for improving economics of CO2 storage operations, namely enhanced industrial production with CO2 storage to generate additional profit, and co-injection of CO2 with impurities to reduce the cost. Moreover, the role of multiple CCS technologies and their distribution on the mitigation of CO2 emissions in the future are summarized. This review demonstrates that CO2 storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs could play an important role in reducing CO2 emission in the near future and CO2 storage in saline aquifers may make the biggest contribution due to its huge storage capacity. Comparing the various available strategies, CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) operations are supposed to play the most important role for CO2 mitigation in the next few years, followed by CO2-enhanced gas recovery (CO2-EGR). The direct mineralization of flue gas by coal fly ash and the pH swing mineralization would be the most promising technology for the mineral sequestration of CO2. Furthermore, by accelerating the deployment of CCS projects on large scale, the government can also play its role in reducing the CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]