1.1.

Earthquake triggering and large-scale geologic storage of carbon dioxide

In this paper, that started the discussion about the Earthquake triggering, Zoback and Gorelick argument that
injecting large scales of CO2 into the brittle rocks could be, with high probability, the source of earthquakes
that could compromise the integrity of the CO2 repositories, cancelling this effort to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. [1]
As first the authors compare the statistics about the yearly volume of CO2 production in the US and China,
that reaches respectively 8.38 and 5.83 billion metric tons. The necessary volume that large scale Carbon
Capture and Storage (CSS) should have to really influence the greenhouse effect it's enormous: it is needed
a yearly storage of 3.5 billion tons corresponding to ~27 billion oil barrels. Additionally to this, the climate
benefit of CSS could be compared to renewable energy only if his leakage is around 1% per thousand years.

Figure 1: Recorded seismicity in the United States and China, in red are indicated the reservoir-induced seismicity, us geological survey

As basic first point of their thesis, Zoback and Gorelick assess that earthquakes occur nearly everywhere in
the continental interiors with a low rate of occurrence but often with high magnitude. This is caused by
preexisting potentially active faults in the crust, also called critically stressed nature of the brittle crust. It is
this nature of the crust the first danger stated by the authors: the injection could trigger an earthquake (see
figure 2). Due to the fact that the injection rises the pore pressure, reducing frictional resistance to fault slips
in preexisting potentially active faults, the elastic energy stored in the rocks could be released, anticipating a
process that would naturally occurs in the future.
As an argument for this theory, the authors take as example many different earthquakes occurred in 2011
affirmed to be bond with the injection of wastewater with a range of magnitude between 4 and 5.3. The
authors came to the conclusion that contrarily to the fact that wastewater injection is secure because could
be controlled with planning, it could be problematic if one of those happened earthquakes happened in
proximity of a CO2 storage.
The critically stressed nature of the crust is confirmed by deep borehole stress measurements and also has
been measured in sites that could be used for CCS storage. This limits the injection pressure of CO2, as also
referenced in an example in the US. A CO2 injection rate is 1% too high, seen the low permeability in formation
a depth, could trigger a slip on existing faults due to the rise of pore pressure. This is referenced by a US
government study that consider triggering even a small pressure overstep.
Another comparison example is taken as example are the dams: even if the construction leads to smaller
pore water variations, they are able to trigger earthquakes, so as analogy the CSS should be considered to
have this risk too.
At this point the authors focus on their main concern on the CSS large scale reservoirs: the seal integrity that
could be damaged even by a small earthquake, creating a leakage. Seen that an Earthquake of around M 6
could cause harm, it is advised to carefully choose the repository placement. Consequently, one study that
has to be done is to try identifying faults with a size of at least 10 km, known to be capable to create such an
earthquake (see fig 3). This method doesnt exclude the possibility of smaller earthquakes.

Figure 2: relationship between fault size, magnitude and slip segment

The aimed placement of the long CO2 storage, particular geological formation and around 2 km in depth (to
have enough sealing but not yet very low porosities) makes the sealing susceptible even to Earthquakes. As
example is taken a possible earthquake of a ~4 triggered by a CSS storage: even if damage risk on the
surface are small, the related centimeter of slip could cause a permeable hydraulic pathway that could cause
leakage.
The authors specify that the CSS storage is a valid method to reduce greenhouse effect in specific situations
and, in some existing storage facilities, any earthquake hasn't been triggered in 15 years. This could be
attributed to the constituent rock of the reservoir: isolating, highly porous and permeable with lateral
extensity to adjust small overpressures. Optimal rocks would be weak, poorly cemented sandstones (they
deform slowly to geological forces and arent not prone to faulting) as also impermeable shale formation
(that show the upper necessary characteristics).
The problem is that the particular, safe, formation has to be found in convenient location and are needed
around 3500 sites: 85 new sites each year to reach the 1-billion-ton injection by midcentury. This would lead
to the use also of weakly cemented formations. To avoid this, it could be sought ideal formations on a regional
basis, but large storage could lead to several Mega Pascal increase in the pore pressure of a wide area (in the
order of more tens of thousands km2) around the CSS. This implicate a careful monitoring that make
necessary that the repository would be on land (or on proximity).
A placement that is attractive to be used as storage are depleted oil and gas reservoirs: they have
infrastructure already in place, geological data are available and the soil has a pore pressure below the pre-
extraction value. The possibility to inject before reaching the natural pore pressure reduce the risk of
triggering Earthquakes. A concern come from the distribution and capacity of those storages, calculated to
be insufficient, as also not geographically distributed as wanted. Others concerns are referred to the seal
capacity: it has to be evaluated the possibility of damages caused by production related activities or the
quality of the cemented well casing to avoid leaching. For those argumentation and for legal question
concerning ownership and liability, are preferred saline aquifer: they are better distributed and more
voluminous.
The current research projects are also criticized for their inability to reproduce the full-scale pressure
variations as also the assumption of limiting the pressure at the level of hydraulic fracture. The critically
stressed crust implies the possibility of triggering small/medium size earthquakes even with lower pressures.
A particular example of an event in proximity of CO2 storage is taken as example, it is not known if there have
been damages to the seal integrity.
Seen the possibility of failure with a low pore pressure that could trigger small/moderate earthquakes, the
location of large scale reservoir should be carefully chosen. The sealing has to be impermeable and the well
cementation weak (to avoid brittle failure) and the soil has to respect strict properties boundaries. All these
constraints make doubtable the effective availability of enough sites to achieve the wished environmental
effect. Concluding the authors point to large scale CSS as an extremely expensive and risky strategy of
reduction greenhouse gas emission.
All images are taken from the scientific, referenced paper [1]

[1] Zoback, Mark D.; Gorelick, Steven M., "Earthquake triggering and large-scale geologic storage of carbon
dioxide," PNAS, 2012.