The role of CCUS for a low-emissions Western Australia

The recent modelling by the IEA suggests that Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) continues to be one of many key technologies necessary to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. For various industries in Western Australia with high CO2 emissions CCUS will be an important abatement option. Western Australia is in the fortunate position to have abundant carbon storage potential in its sedimentary basins, which have been characterized at various scales.

In this presentation we will discuss the CCUS landscape in Western Australia by providing an overview of historic geological storage characterization studies, current projects and CCUS Hub initiatives under development. We will talk in more detail about CCUS requirements and activities in southwestern WA and will show results of a CO2 injection experiment at a research field site, the CSIRO In-Situ Laboratory (ISL), established in 2019 south of Perth. The ISL is a unique field site for fluid injection experiments to de-risk the potential impact of a fault zone on CO2 storage.

Guest Speakers: Allison Hortle and Ludovic Ricard
Allison Hortle is a Senior Researcher with CSIRO Energy since 1993 and is currently Research Group Leader in the Energy Resources Program. Allison’s most recent research addresses the need to couple large scale deep reservoir processes (such as CO2 injection and unconventional gas production) to near surface techniques for determining environmental baselines and long-term monitoring and verification practises.

Ludovic Ricard is a reservoir engineer at CSIRO Energy since 2009. He joined CSIRO as reservoir engineer for geothermal energy projects, later moving to carbon geosequestration and unconventional reservoirs. Currently he is the CSIRO lead of distributed fibre optic sensing research and managing operations at the CSIRO In-Situ Lab research site. He is a member of SPE, SPWLA, FESAus and EAGE.