Coupled reservoir-geomechanical analysis of CO2 injection and ground deformations at In Salah, Algeria

In Salah Gas Project in Algeria has been injecting 0.5–1 million tonnes CO2 per year over the past 5 years into a water-filled strata at a depth of about 1800–1900 m. Unlike most CO2 storage sites, the permeability of the storage formation is relatively low and comparatively thin with a thickness of about 20 m. To ensure adequate CO2 flow-rates across the low-permeability sand-face, the In Salah Gas Project decided to use long-reach (about 1–1.5 km) horizontal injection wells. In an ongoing research project we use field data and coupled reservoir-geomechanical numerical modeling to assess the effectiveness of this approach and to investigate monitoring techniques to evaluate the performance of a CO2 injection operation in relatively low-permeability formations. Among the field data used are ground surface deformations evaluated from recently acquired satellite-based inferrometry (InSAR). The InSAR data shows a surface uplift on the order of 5 mm per year above active CO2 injection wells and the uplift pattern extends several km from the injection wells. In this paper we use the observed surface uplift to constrain our coupled reservoir-geomechanical model and conduct sensitivity studies to investigate potential causes and mechanisms of the observed uplift. The results of our analysis indicate that most of the observed uplift magnitude can be explained by pressure-induced, poro-elastic expansion of the 20-m-thick injection zone, but there could also be a significant contribution from pressure-induced deformations within a 100-m-thick zone of shaly sands immediately above the injection zone.