Pressure control and conformance management for safe and efficient CO2 storage – lessons learned in the Pre-ACT project

The three-year (2017-2020) research project Pre-ACT was granted as one of the first three large projects in the Accelerating CCS
Technologies (ACT) program (https://act-ccs.eu). Pre-ACT was a collaborative effort between partners from six research institutes
and four companies with an active role in CCS. The project ambition was to deliver cutting-edge research into the safe storage and
monitoring of CO2, particularly to improve strategies for monitoring and management of the pore pressure distribution within the
storage reservoir. Pre-ACT has established methodologies for assessing the conformance of a storage site, relative to its expected
performance. The primary output is quantitative conformance systems, relying on cost-effective monitoring, and guidelines
(protocols) on how to act on a failed conformance test. The protocols are applicable to industrial operators and focus on the main
storage-related challenges for accelerated deployment of CCS: capacity, confidence and cost.
We report here on the lessons learned within the project, both in terms of European collaboration between research institutes and
industry partners in the new ACT-program, but most of all in terms of the new knowledge and methods related to monitoring and
control over large-scale storage projects in the North Sea. In addition, we describe a unique experimental campaign with brine and
CO2 injection at the new ECCSEL Svelvik CO2 Field Lab and touch upon the important work of communicating research findings
to external stakeholders (such as policy makers, regulators, and future CCS project operators).