Energy Technologies: How They Work and Their Induced Seismicity Potential - Induced Seismicity Potential in Energy Technologies - page 75

TABLE 3.3 Petroleum and Natural Gas Production in 2010

Natural Gas
Plant Liquids
(NGPL)

Other
Liquids

Total Crude Oil, NGPL,
and Other Liquids

Total Dry
Natural Gas Crude Oil

United
States

2.00
billion
barrels

757 million
barrels

391
million
barrels

3.15 billion
barrels

501 million
m 3

611 billion
m 3

World 27.0

billion
barrels

3.08 billion
barrels

754
million
barrels

30.9 billion
barrels

4.91 billion
m 3

3.17 trillion
m 3

NOTE: 1.00000 barrel = 0.15899 m 3 .
SOURCE: EIA 2010 International Energy Statistics (available at www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/
IEDIndex3.cfm).

1 million metric tonnes [approximately 1.55 million m 3 ] 15 or less of CO 2 stored per year in
geologic reservoirs) are in operation. In the United States, no commercial CCS technologies
are currently deployed, although DOE-supported research is currently exploring the most
suitable technologies for CCS through regional partnerships throughout the country. 16 One
of these regional projects in Illinois has advanced to the stage of conducting a large-scale
test to inject 1 million metric tonnes of CO 2 ; DOE defines “large-scale” as 1 million metric
tonnes [approximately 1.55 million m 3 ] or more. Both the global, commercial projects and
the Illinois test project are discussed in the sections that follow.

Current Projects

The Norwegian state oil company Statoil and its partners currently operate CCS
projects at offshore sites in the Sleipner field on the Norwegian continental shelf and in
the In Salah gas field in Algeria (Box 3.8). They had also operated a CCS project at the
Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea, north of Norway, until early in 2011. At Sleipner approxi-
mately 1 million metric tonnes a year have been injected since 1996. The demonstration
CO 2 injection project in northern Illinois has been in development for several years; injec-
tion of CO 2 began in late 2011. The project plans to inject approximately 1 million metric
tonnes per year for several years (Box 3.9). Seismic activity is being routinely monitored at
all of these CCS sites. Although the CO 2 injection rates and volumes for these projects are

15 Volume calculated using 0.70 g/cm 3 as the density of supercritical CO 2 ; however, this density may range from 0.60
to 0.75 g/cm 3 .
16 See fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/partnerships/index.html.