Geochemical assessment of isolation performance during 10 years of CO2 EOR at Weyburn

AbstractThe Final-Phase Weyburn geochemical research program includes explicitly integrated yet conceptually distinct monitoring, modeling, and experimental components. The principal objectives are to monitor CO2-induced compositional evolution within the reservoir through time-lapse sampling and chemical analysis of produced fluids; to document the absence (or presence) of injected CO2 within reservoir overburden through analogous monitoring of shallow groundwater and soil gas; to predict intra-reservoir CO2 migration paths, dynamic CO2 mass partitioning among distinct trapping mechanisms, and reservoir/seal permeability evolution through reactive transport modeling; to assess the impact of CO2-brine-rock reactions on fracture flow and isolation performance through experimental studies that directly support the monitoring and modeling work; and to exploit a novel stochastic inversion technique that enables explicit integration of these diverse monitoring data and forward models to improve reservoir characterization and long-term forecasts of isolation performance