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Abstract

Natural gas from the Załęcze gas field located in the Fore-Sudetic Monocline of the Southern Permian Basin has been produced since November 1973, and continuous gas production led to a decrease in the initial reservoir pressure from 151 bar to about 22 bar until 2010. We investigated a prospective enhanced gas recovery operation at the Załęcze gas field by coupled numerical hydro-mechanical simulations to account for the CO2 storage capacity, trapping efficiency and mechanical integrity of the reservoir, caprock and regional faults. Dynamic flow simulations carried out indicate a CO2 storage capacity of 106.6 Mt with a trapping efficiency of about 43% (45.8 Mt CO2) established after 500 years of simulation. Two independent strategies on the assessment of mechanical integrity were followed by two different modeling groups resulting in the implementation of field- to regional-scale hydro-mechanical simulation models. The simulation results based on application of different constitutive laws for the lithological units show deviations of 31% to 93% for the calculated maximum vertical displacements at the reservoir top. Nevertheless, results of both simulation strategies indicate that fault reactivation generating potential leakage pathways from the reservoir to shallower units is very unlikely due to the low fault slip tendency (close to zero) in the Zechstein caprocks. Consequently, our simulation results also emphasise that the supra- and subsaliniferous fault systems at the Załęcze gas field are independent and very likely not hydraulically connected. Based on our simulation results derived from two independent modeling strategies with similar simulation results on fault and caprock integrity, we conclude that the investigated enhanced gas recovery scheme is feasible, with a negligibly low risk of relevant fault reactivation or formation fluid leakage through the Zechstein caprocks.