Emissions

DOE lab publishes wellbore data for carbon sequestration ventures

The platform’s analytics are intended to give researchers a better understanding of the age, total vertical depth and status of wells across the country.
DOE lab publishes wellbore data for carbon sequestration ventures
(The National Energy Technology Laboratory campus near Pittsburgh. Credit: NETL)

A new database provides information on existing wells that may be considered as sites for future carbon sequestration projects. Developed with funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and published on the Energy Data eXchange, CO2-Locate is a centralized platform using open-source wellbore data from state and federal entities.

CO2-Locate was developed by the Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and provides a national well database that integrates data from class II (oil and gas) wells across the country to help inform class VI (carbon capture and sequestration) needs.

The database also provides summary spatio-temporal statistics and insights into potential opportunities and risks and includes a web map. The platform’s analytics are intended to give researchers a better understanding of the age, total vertical depth and status of wells across the country.

“As a dynamic database, CO2-Locate will support future automatic updates, capturing changes among data and new data from the original disparate sources,” said NETL’s Jennifer Bauer, the project’s principal investigator and member of NETL’s Science-based Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Institute (SAMI). 

By using CO2-Locate, project managers, researchers, and industry stakeholders are expected to be able to access data that might reduce risk and uncertainties while saving time and helping to reduce costs, making projects feasible that might otherwise be prohibitively expensive or difficult.

In related news, the Energy Department on July 11 announced 16 projects across 14 states were set to receive $23.4 million to provide technical assistance and enhanced stakeholder engagement around carbon management technologies.

The projects are housed at both universities and private sector companies, and aim to connect carbon management developers with local communities in a bid to foster collaboration and education toward advancing commercial deployment of carbon capture, transport, and storage technologies across the United States. NETL, under the purview of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, will manage the selected projects.

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