Carbon capture and
sequestration is the process of capturing carbon
dioxide (CO
2
) from refineries, industrial facilities, and
major point sources such as power plants and storing the CO
2
in subsurface formations. Carbon capture and sequestration has the
potential to generate an industry comparable to, if not greater than,
the existing oil and gas sector. Subsurface formations such as unconventional
oil and gas reservoirs can store significant quantities of CO
2
. Despite their importance in the oil and gas industry, our
understanding of CO
2
sequestration in unconventional reservoirs
still needs to be developed. The objective of this paper was to use
an extensive data set of numerical simulation results combined with
data analytics and machine learning to identify the key parameters
that affect CO
2
sequestration in depleted shale reservoirs.
Machine learning-based predictive models based on multiple linear
regression, regression tree, bagging, random forest, and gradient
boosting were built to predict the cumulative CO
2
injected.
Variable importance was carried out to identify and rank important
reservoir and operational parameters. The results showed that random
forest provided the best predictive ability among the machine learning
techniques and that regression tree had the worst predictive ability,
mainly because of overfitting. The most significant variable for predicting
cumulative CO
2
sequestration was stimulated reservoir volume
fracture permeability. The workflows, machine learning models, and
results reported in this study provide insights for exploration and
production companies interested in quantifying CO
2
sequestration
performance in shale reservoirs.
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) will generate an industry comparable to, if not greater than, the existing oil and gas sector. Carbon capture and sequestration is the capture of carbon-dioxide from refineries, industrial facilities, and major point sources such as power plants and storing it in subsurface formations. Subsurface formations like unconventional reservoirs can be a good example for storing carbon-dioxide. Despite its importance in the oil and gas industry, our understanding of carbon-dioxide sequestration in unconventional reservoirs still needs to be developed. The objective of this paper is to identify the most important parameters that affect carbon-dioxide sequestration in depleted shale reservoirs using data-analytics and machine-learning.
The dataset used was an extensive shale reservoir dataset which comprised a large set of numerical simulation scenarios. A quality check of the input data was performed for missing variables. Then, a data-analytics based investigation was followed to develop insights into the relationship between reservoir parameters and operational parameters, which were the main predictor variables, as well as between the predictor variables and the main response variable: cumulative CO2 injected. Machine-learning based predictive models such as multiple linear regression, regression tree, bagging, random forest, and boosting were built to predict the cumulative CO2 injected. Variable importance (screening) was carried out to determine the crucial parameters which drive CO2 sequestration performance in shale reservoirs.
The results revealed that there is a relationship between the reservoir and operational parameters, together with the predictor variables and response variable. Operational parameters displayed a monotonic relationship with the cumulative CO2 injected. Random forest provided the best predictive ability among the machine-learning techniques consistent with the theoretical background of random forest. Regression tree had the worst predictive ability mainly because of overfitting. Screening results show that stimulated reservoir volume fracture permeability was the most important variable for the performance of CO2 sequestration. The findings and results reported in this study will allow the exploration and production companies to determine what causes low-performance or high-performance CO2 sequestration process in shale reservoirs.
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