CO 2 Injection Well Build-Out Scenarios for Achieving 2DS

This study assumes that the target mass of CO2 can be captured and delivered to injection wells at acceptable costs, largely ignoring the primary economic factors needed to ensure successful full-scale capture deployment. The analysis presented uses the historical development of hydrocarbon extraction wells drilled in various regions as a basis for the expected rate of future well deployment for CO2 injection (Fig. 1). The most aggressive of these is the Bakken unconventional development in the central U.S., and the smallest scale is represented by the offshore hydrocarbon development offshore Texas. The Norwegian North Sea and the entire Gulf of Mexico represent other potential scenarios. This future hypothetical CO2 well development assumes that experience and technology will allow a similar exponential growth in deployment as was observed for hydrocarbon extraction, as well as for other technologies (Kramer and Haigh, 2009). By making some further assumptions based on industry experience about the likely life of each injection well (25 years) and the average annual rate of CO2 injection (0.7 Mtpa; Ringrose and Meckel, 2019), the future incremental and cumulative volume (Fig. 2) of injected CO2 can be estimated. Such estimates are useful for understanding the scale of regional and global deployment needed, as well as for providing a basis with which to evaluate incremental progress and maintain targets.