Environmentally friendly gas tracer for subsurface application

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Tracers has been used extensively in the oil and gas industry. Resman has a portfolio of gas tracers that has been used for years. They are detectable in extremely low concentrations and the amount needed for large reservoir studies are very low, some few kilos. During burning of gas these molecules are destroyed. However, due to their very high global warming potential (GWP) there are environmental restrictions on use of these type of molecules and it has become more difficult to get hold on and they may become illegal to use in the future. Ther is therefore a strong need for new components having a lower GWP. The new tracers need to be stable in the reservoir and be detectable in extremely low concentrations. There will be a need for tracers both in the oil and gas industry, for CO2 storage monitoring and also for monitoring of the energy potential in geothermal reservoirs. As Resman is focusing on growing in the renewable energy market the new tracers to be developed should be usable for all these applications. Some tracers may be usable for all applications, while other may be limited to only a part of the applications due to limited thermal and chemical stability, sampling challenges and absorption to surfaces. The project further includes use of tracers for measuring capillary trapped CO2 (CTC). One important storage mechanism for CO2 is capillary trapping. The potential for capillary trapping varies from reservoir to reservoir. To assess the storage potential for a specific reservoir there is therefore a need to do in situ measurement in a representative part of the reservoir. The project aims at developing the tracers and method needed to quantification CTC in the near well region.