Storage / CO₂ Sequestration

ETA team members have extensive expertise across the full life cycle of underground storage project identification, development, commissioning and operation. Whether for storing hydrogen, hydrocarbons or for sequestering CO₂, ETA has experience across a broad range of cavern, aquifer and depleted reservoir storage facilities, and can assist in reservoir analysis, and wellbore, compression, processing and pipeline design and operation. ETA’s experience also includes the processing and transportation of CO₂, including purification, compression and liquefaction to support carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) projects.

Notable Projects

• PHMSA UGS Subject Matter Expert – ETA provides support to the DOE Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration. (PHMSA), as a subject matter expert in underground natural gas storage. ETA worked with PHMSA auditors to provide technical expertise on multiple facilities, including cavern storage, reservoir storage and aquifer storage. ETA continues to assist PHMSA in performing site inspections, records reviews, and interviews of site personnel. Deliverables include facility specific exit interviews and “90-day” reports.
• Wolf Infrastructure ACTL, CO₂ EOR and Sequestration – An ETA member provided technical due diligence to an institutional investor for the acquisition and construction of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL), a 149-mile CO₂ pipeline including collection and compression of anthropogenic CO₂ from multiple industrial sources in northern Alberta for utilization in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The ETA member also performed a comprehensive technical review of the CO₂ EOR project’s design and expected performance for two mature Alberta oil fields owned by a consortium partner.
• New Jersey Resources – ETA provided due diligence services on operating / development-stage salt dome cavern and reservoir gas storage projects being considered for acquisition. ETA’s review of these 18 caverns and 5 depleted reservoirs helped the client understand the detailed technical and operational issues unique to each project, and ultimately aided in the successful acquisition of an operating facility.
• Petra Nova West-Ranch Field CO₂ EOR and Sequestration – An ETA member provided an international debt consortium with a technical due diligence review of a coal powered generation carbon capture CO₂ EOR project, including CO₂ compression, design, and construction of an 80-mile CO₂ pipeline, and detailed design for complete redevelopment of the multiple reservoir CO₂ EOR field. The technical review included review of the field geology, EOR simulation results, production surface facilities, recycled CO₂ capture/treatment/recompression facilities, and financial model inputs.
• NGL Storage Development – An ETA member provided project owner’s engineer role technical review of development plans to construct multiple bedded salt caverns for natural gas liquids (NGL) storage to serve NGL markets in Appalachia, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. The reviews examined the geology of cavern intervals, including integrity of top sealing formations, cavern drilling and completion plans, related proposed cavern design, cavern mining plans, and the effect of NGL operations on cavern integrity and potential subsidence.
• Magnum Development – An ETA member performed a pre-engineering design and cavern operation optimization study of a prospective 13 Bcf cavern storage project in central Utah. The study included an evaluation of various combinations of seasonal versus high frequency storage cycle operations, with simulations including optimal gas compression sizing for compensated brine versus natural gas pad designs, combined with performance of an integrated prospective 60-mile bidirectional natural gas pipeline header. An ETA member also performed an evaluation of hydrocarbon liquid storage in several underground caverns located within the Magnum Western Energy Hub project site which will soon become one of the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage projects.