Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration—Validation Phase
Project # 42591

Primary Performing Organization:
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

The Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration (SWP) is one of the seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships created by DOE in 2003 as part of its program to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.  After two years of fact finding across the United States, the Partnerships are now engaged in individual carbon sequestration validation projects.  Each Partnership project is distinct in its geology, land use, and population base.  The SWP, led by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, includes the states of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, and parts of Kansas, Texas, and Wyoming.  See Map.  SWP’s validation project is a four-year effort devoted to validating promising carbon dioxide (CO₂) sequestration opportunities within the Southwest region.

Ongoing investigations reveal that the region’s geologic reservoirs offer the highest potential in sequestration opportunities, including:

• Deep saline formations of up to 64 billion metric tons of CO₂ capacity.
• Abandoned and depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs of up to 21.4 billion metric tons of CO₂ capacity.
• Coal seams of up to 2.3 billion metric tons of CO₂ capacity.

The objectives of the project are to:

• Conduct five field pilot tests to validate the most promising sequestration technologies and concepts, including three geologic pilot tests and two terrestrial pilot programs.
• Develop risk mitigation procedures for the sequestration tests.
• Optimize monitoring, mitigation, and verification protocols.
• Conduct outreach and communication about SWP’s work to the general public.

The data generated by the field tests will be valuable to commercial-scale sequestration projects in the Southwest.

Contact:
Project Manager:  Bill O’Dowd, william.odowd@netl.doe.gov

Related Papers and Publications:

•  SWP Validation Phase Fact Sheet (pdf)