The United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) has completed studies to estimate the storage resource on the continental shelf off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the U.S. The projects used a variety of methodologies and covered different geologic settings offshore of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and the Atlantic coasts.
Currently DOE is funding two offshore partnerships to assemble the knowledge base required for secure, long-term, large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) storage, with or without enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, and assess technology-development needs (infrastructure, operational, monitoring), which differ from those onshore.
The advantages of offshore CO2 storage for the U.S. include:
Considerations in determining the suitability of a formation for storage include:
Southeast Regional Carbon Storage Partnership: Offshore Gulf of Mexico (SECARB GOM): SECARB GOM is leading a coalition of southern universities and technical experts to expand the existing GOM government-industry partnership and focus on assembling the knowledge base required for secure, long-term, large-scale CO2 subsea storage.
Detailed discussion of the results of these studies are provided by Savage and Ozgen and Agartan et al., Bruno et al., Nemeth et al. and https://www.beg.utexas.edu/gccc/research/osra.
Detailed discussion of the results of these studies are provided by Gupta, Nemeth et al.