The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), part of the U.S. Department of Energy has introduced the CO2-Locate database. The centralized platform, published on the Energy Data eXchange® (EDX), is designed to support the site selection, risk analysis, and other key stakeholders needs of carbon capture and storage projects. CO2-Locate is among the projects funded from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The platform offers an integrated national well database by collecting and integrating data from class II (oil and gas) wells throughout the United States. This comprehensive database serves to inform and cater to the requirements of class VI (Carbon Capture and Storage) initiatives.
On a global scale, there are more than six million wells, extensively drilled for research and resource exploration, often thousands of feet into the subsurface. The information and data associated with these wells presents an opportunity to support and guide the carbon storage commercial and regulatory sectors.
By capitalizing on NETL’s established research and development technologies, CO2-Locate aims to provide researchers with advanced analytics on the age, total vertical depth, and current status of wells throughout the country.
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“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. “This means users will always have access to the most current information.”
The ongoing schema development aims to facilitate customized acquisition, processing, and integration of data seamlessly into CO2-Locate, Bauer also said. CO2-Locate functions as a versatile framework for associating other data – such as field observations on wellbore conditions – to provide users with comprehensive information essential for supporting all stages of Carbon Capture and Storage activities, she added.
Project managers, researchers, industries, and stakeholders can benefit from the CO2-locate data to minimize risks and uncertainties. This, in turn, could lead to significant time and cost savings, making projects that could have otherwise been prohibitively expensive or challenging now feasible and attainable.
Read more: NETL Creates Expansive Carbon Capture Pipeline Route Planning Database
