Contact us
Contact us
Contact us
Tuesday 27 June 2023 - News
Daisy Gallagher, Senior geologist – Underground Injection Control & Carbon Capture and Storage, Geostock Sandia LLC
Since 2020, Geostock Sandia (GKS) assisted Strategic Biofuels (SB) in developing their negative carbon footprint renewable fuels plant in central Louisiana. The project will produce clean, renewable diesel fuel using waste wood from local sustainable forestry and supply all power from internal green processes. The carbon will be converted into fuels and will be sequestered permanently deep beneath the subsurface. The SB project has been designed to sequester over 1.4 million metric tons of CO2 and will be one of the world’s most carbon negative facilities.
In the US, Class VI UIC Injection wells are designed to be used in carbon capture and storage, with a focus on depleted gas fields and saline aquifers reservoirs. The US Gulf Coast is an attractive location for the industry and investors alike due to the proximity to emitters and the favourable geologic suitability for injection and confinement. However, stringent federal requirements must be met, and a demonstration must be made the governing bodies, that the sequestering of CO2 will not impact underground sources of drinking water or impact local communities. To date, only one facility in the US is currently operating with a Class VI Permit.
Since project inception, GKS has been involved with the initial site feasibility selection, followed by a Test Well designed to acquire data that is critical to making this demonstration. The Class VI UIC application for SB culminated in over 15,000 pages of highly technical data and analysis, future model projections over 100-year timeframes, CO2 injection well designs and completions, subsurface monitoring programs, project safety and response, and long-term project development plan and was submitted to the US federal government in March 2023. What sets this project apart, is that GKS took the site-specific data and developed long-term model with refined analysis information to predict the pressure and plume behavior of the injected carbon dioxide over time.
Rigorous subsurface research, data collection, and advanced engineering and software modeling have demonstrated that we can safely and permanently sequester all of the carbon dioxide generated during renewable fuel and green power production at our Louisiana Green Fuels Project in Caldwell Parish. Completing this application for the EPA Class VI Permit accomplishes another major milestone for our Project. The application is massive, and its submission is the culmination of nearly two years of relentless dedication of our outstanding LGF Project team of experts and that of our valued partners at Geostock Sandia.
Bob Meredith, Chief Operating Officer of SB
In the US, Underground injection wells have been divided into six different classes depending on the well type, the injection depth and the potential for the injection activity to result in endangerment of an underground source of drinking water.
Class VI wells are used to inject carbon dioxide (CO2) into underground subsurface rock formations for long-term storage or geologic sequestration. Geologic sequestration refers to technologies to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and mitigate climate change. Stringent requirements have been designed for Class VI well in order to protect underground sources of drinking water. These requirements are described on the United States Environmental Protection Agency website (https://www.epa.gov/uic/class-vi-wells-used-geologic-sequestration-carbon-dioxide).
