China's 1st offshore CO2 storage tops 100 m cubic meters
China's first offshore million-tonne carbon storage project has captured over 10 million cubic meters of carbon dioxide (CO2), equivalent to planting nearly 2.2 million trees, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the country's leading offshore oil and gas producer, said on Wednesday, CGTN reports.
According to CNOOC, the project has made a significant breakthrough in cumulative carbon storage, demonstrating China's mature offshore CO2 sequestration capacity. This achievement is highly important for speeding up the country's dual carbon goals and supporting a green, low-carbon economic and social transformation.
Since it began official operation, the project has run safely for over 15,000 hours, with a peak daily injection volume of 210,000 cubic meters. This innovative model, which advances ecological protection and energy development in tandem, offers a new pathway for the green and low-carbon development of offshore oil and gas fields in China, which can be replicated and extended, said Xu Xiaohu, vice president of the Enping operating company under the CNOOC Shenzhen Branch.
In recent years, by continuously working to overcome technical bottlenecks and improve operational management models, China has created a comprehensive and standardized set of operating procedures that provide vital practical experience and data support for the large-scale use of offshore carbon storage technology.
The CO2 injection and storage demonstration project is situated at the Enping 15-1 platform in the Pearl River Mouth Basin, roughly 200 kilometers southwest of Shenzhen City in southern China. The water at the site is approximately 90 meters deep. If developed using traditional methods, CO2 would be brought to the surface along with crude oil, which would not only cause corrosion to offshore platform equipment and subsea pipelines but also raise carbon emissions.
To achieve precise and efficient gas injection for enhanced oil recovery, the existing infrastructure of the Enping 15-1 platform has been upgraded with additional equipment, including CO2 compressors. An extra gas treatment and cooling system was also added to enable gas-liquid separation, impurity filtration, and accurate control of injection temperature, ensuring the quality of the injected gas.
Our pioneering layered injection and precision control system allows CO2 to be accurately directed into specific layers without interference within a wellbore narrower than 20 centimeters in diameter. This system not only boosts oil displacement efficiency but also guarantees the safety of sequestration, said Wang Lin, production supervisor of the Enping 15-1 platform under the CNOOC Shenzhen Branch.
Over the next decade, the Enping 15-1 oil field is expected to inject over 550 million cubic meters of CO2, leading to an increase in crude oil output by up to 200,000 tonnes.
Earlier, it was reported China achieves decline in carbon emissions.
