Richard Esposito: Okay welcome everybody thank I want to thank everyone for attending today and I want to thank the people at GSA the southeast section for all their support on this.
Richard Esposito: support, and I welcome everybody i'm actually sitting in a trailer right now, at a wealth site which we're drilling in Mississippi and we're going to explore the possibilities of CO2 storage, so I am Richard Esposito.
Richard Esposito: I am a geologist I work at southern company and I manage a wide range of programs involving energy geology I work with energy storage I work with geothermal energy.
Richard Esposito: Work with CO2 storage and geological formations and also some other really interesting things like deep well isolation of spent nuclear fuel and there's actually a.
Richard Esposito: Section or a session coming up later this week that that's going to be involved in that, and we also have a session on CO2 geological storage, so I would encourage everyone to follow up and watch that so.
Richard Esposito: Southern company has a very robust R amp D program for electrical utility and we're looking at a low carbon future we're looking at how we're going to be meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals in the future.
Richard Esposito: And some of that will involve building renewables, such as solar and wind, but a lot of it may involve scrubbing existing power plants with carbon capture technologies.
Richard Esposito: And that is a technology called carbon capture and storage.
Richard Esposito: And so I work more on the storage side and that's the side, where, after we capture the CO2 we transport it to geological formations.
Richard Esposito: And we inject it into these formations for long term secure geological storage now with That said, you can much imagine just like looking for oil and gas deposits there's a lot of exploration and.
Richard Esposito: Development that goes in in looking for these formations and where these locate location of these formations are really good for CO2 storage.
Richard Esposito: So site characterization is really important, and so today we're going to be going over a lot of discussions on site characterization like I said we're actually at a site.
Richard Esposito: Where we just got through drilling a well when we first plan this field trip we didn't know the timing of this well we knew it was going to be being drilled right about this time but we're just finishing up the well.
Richard Esposito: But we've done a lot of videotaping before we drill the well and during drilling of the well.
Richard Esposito: And we've also got some folks that have done some drone video.
Richard Esposito: Of the operation so we're going to get to look at that so with that i'm going to be turning it over and I want to talk about the program so this program that we're involved here is actually funded by the Department of Energy, I want to give a huge shout out to them.
Richard Esposito: They fund a lot of this research and development and carbon and one of the organizations that has the cooperative agreement for one of the do we programs, which is called the carbon safe program is the southern states energy board and i'm going to be.
Richard Esposito: Introducing right now Ben we're net he is actually with the southern states energy board he's going to say a few things about the southern states energy board what they do.
Richard Esposito: And, and then we're going to move back along to the site operators advanced resources, international, which are the folks that are going to be drilling the well so with that i'm going to turn it over to bed.
Richard Esposito: Okay.
Richard Esposito: Sorry i'm trying to share screen near.
Richard Esposito: Okay.
Richard Esposito: Are you able to see that, without any issues.
Richard Esposito: I mean well today i'm Dave recent Berg at advanced resources international will be speaking at length about large volume scale to storage in the southeastern us.
Richard Esposito: As Richard said i'm with the southern states energy board who manages the cooperative agreement from the Department of Energy and assists with the daily management of the East coast project.
Richard Esposito: briefly here the southern states energy board is an energy or excuse me it's an interstate compact organization that was created by State law and consented to by Congress.
Richard Esposito: The energy board is made up of 16 US states and to us territories, those being Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Richard Esposito: Each jurisdiction is represented by a governor a legislator from the House in the Senate and a governor's alternate.
Richard Esposito: The boards broad mission is to enhance the economic development and quality of life in the south, through innovations in energy and environmental policies programs and technologies.
Richard Esposito: One of the programs we pursue this mission with is the east coast project that is ultimately funded by the Department of Energy and the Board is supported by 11 staff members who oversee and mentor manage these federally funded projects.
Richard Esposito: Okay, so part of the southern states energy board research portfolio is the carbon management for portfolio.
Richard Esposito: Here in this figure i'm showing the southeastern United States with the sea car breach and outlined in green.
Richard Esposito: See carb is one of four of do e's regional carbon sequestration partnerships and i've also plotted a number of active and inactive field scale and regional studies.
Richard Esposito: it's important to note here that a lot of these regional studies in the area have led to technology transfer and some interesting scale up for for commercial deployment in the southeast.
Richard Esposito: If you have any questions about so in states energy board or our carbon management program I recommend that you contact us directly i've.
Richard Esposito: put our contacts here in the bottom left hand portion of this finger or you're more than welcome to visit our site directly to.
Richard Esposito: So with that i'm going to hand things over to Dave rustenburg who's going to talk a little bit more about the history of the project and a little bit about the geology as well, thank you.
Richard Esposito: Alright, thanks everyone.
Richard Esposito: happy to be participating in a GSA meeting, and I promise you will get some geology here in a moment.
Richard Esposito: So, as I think both Ben and Richard mentioned this project, supported by the US Department of Energy through their carbon safe Program.
Richard Esposito: And the aspiration of that program is to support commercial CO2 storage projects, obviously in the United States.
Richard Esposito: And then they've defined commercial is projects that would would inject and safely store up to 50 million metric tons of apartment oxides.
Richard Esposito: The big projects and ones that are that are mature enough state that they could perhaps be doing CO2 injection by as early as 2023 so in a couple of years.
Richard Esposito: let's see yeah so the fact that there's a large project team i'll show you some of their.
Richard Esposito: logos here in a slide or two but suffice to say that a lot of what I represented his work that was done by by a lot of great geoscientists and i'll try to mention their affiliations and needs as we move through it.
Richard Esposito: i'm not sure how folks are able to to ask questions if you know folks from GSA want to interrupt me if there's questions if there's things that are coming up on a chat that's certainly fine but.
Richard Esposito: Anyway, so the project egos it started in about five years ago when we were working with southern company and Mississippi power and we identified this site under and around the what was then called the capper county energy facility.
Richard Esposito: which was a concept, then, was to do a coal gasification plant, so you take lignite gasify it in that process produces a lot of carbon dioxide in itself and then combust that gas for energy.
Richard Esposito: So in 2017 we started this carbon safe program and drill three wells and we're really excited about what we saw and i'll show you some some of those results here.
Richard Esposito: As we move through the presentation, but at the same time that I GCC plant make a change scope let's say and they moved to a just a natural gas combustion power plants, instead of gas and coal they're burning natural gas that's being transported to the site via pipeline and so.
Richard Esposito: that's actually a less of a CO2 emissions source now than it was anticipated to be.
Richard Esposito: Meanwhile we're seeing things that really excite us on the storage geology side of things, and so we're we're now we've moved into this concept of this being a regional CO2 storage hub.
Richard Esposito: of sufficient volume that we could probably take CO2 from multiple southern company power plants is stored here.
Richard Esposito: And we're now in Phase three of this carbon safe Program.
Richard Esposito: continue to evaluate the geology of the of the site through activities, including the the well drilling that we're we're overseeing as we speak.
Richard Esposito: But we're also bringing in the CO2 capture and transportation aspect of this, you know CO2.
Richard Esposito: capture and storage, as you can imagine, as a kind of a whole chain process there's a place, you have to capture the CO2, you need to move it to your injection site and then inject it, and so the geology is only one component of it.
Richard Esposito: A lot of different partners on this project you saw Ben from southern states energy board and Richard from southern company, but there's you know there's geologists from the geological survey of Alabama.
Richard Esposito: there's geologists from uab and engineers from uab geologists from.
Richard Esposito: Oklahoma State University oh and they're probably even missing a few, but then you add to that a lot of different engineers looking at aspects of the CO2 capture and transportation.
Richard Esposito: So you know we're located and kind of East central Mississippi for those that are you know more surface focused geologists we're in the north central hills district of the physio graphic region.
Richard Esposito: That box in the image on the right shows you where where where CAP or county is located in the southern edge of it, the left is an image of the IPCC plant when it was fully operational.
Richard Esposito: So a little bit about the stratego fee at the site.
Richard Esposito: You know just a very brief comment about CO2 storage and what kind of things you want to look for obviously you're looking for porous and permeable reservoirs you're looking to eject large volumes of fluid the subsurface let's see a tues buoyant, and so what you want to find is.
Richard Esposito: Is is pores impermeable units that CAP rock to them so kind of similar to a conventional oil trap, so what what's being highlighted there some of those formations the policy.
Richard Esposito: The one sheet of fredericksburg interval middle of which we've dubbed the big Fred it's a big pile of sand.
Richard Esposito: And then, at about 3500 feet deep you've got the tuscaloosa lower tuscaloosa massive saying and then just beneath and unconformity you've got the upper most wash Fred.
Richard Esposito: And that's called the Chancellor Sam you got two big regional unconformity, as you can see here the one at the base of the section, which is.
Richard Esposito: moorings port that's the deepest cretaceous unit that we see here and it sits right on top of paleozoic and then you have that big unconformity there between.
Richard Esposito: lower and upper cretaceous there at the top of the Chancellor, you got confining units in the in the form of the Marine tuscaloosa shale and then also shallower than that.
Richard Esposito: You got the Selma group and the porters creek shale, but you also have confinement in between the storage reservoirs there's their shells in the upper part in the lower part of the watch Fred section.
Richard Esposito: So structurally, this is a pretty interesting part of the world.
Richard Esposito: you're kind of at the.
Richard Esposito: at a juncture between appalachian tectonic belts, which of course are extending to the east northeast kind of bounding the south end of the the warrior basin.
Richard Esposito: And then to the Northwest you've got the watch a tall tectonic belt and then all kind of comes together and the deep subsurface beneath kemper county.
Richard Esposito: And if you look at that image, the middle, you can see, somewhat, but at least looks to me like appalachian you know thrust belt complex there and in the middle of the paleozoic section.
Richard Esposito: But above that in the cretaceous and tertiary section you kind of have.
Richard Esposito: You know railroad tracks style strutting your feet really been deformed.
Richard Esposito: And and and you know if there's any kind of structure it's just a subtle dip to the southwest towards the Gulf beneath all this would be crystal a basement so we don't see any indications of folding or faulting in that cretaceous tertiary section again that's our storage reservoir.
Richard Esposito: And then you do a Paleo duck section before you get down to basement crystal a basement.
Richard Esposito: If you tie together regional well logs there are you know, a smattering of.
Richard Esposito: logs that have been acquired across the region for wildcat oil and gas exploration, all of which were trials.
Richard Esposito: In Todd tops in there, you see kind of that same structural story just kind of a consistent dip to the West Southwest at about less than a degree about 50 to 70 feet per mile.
Richard Esposito: So we are in the midst of drilling the fifth of our six characterization wells.
Richard Esposito: And we drilled three of those wells at 2017 we've at this point and acquired over 200 feet of whole core and and are.
Richard Esposito: Trying to acquire more the last well of the planet drills would be kind of core palooza get a couple hundred feet, of course, from that one recording confining units recording reservoir and doing analysis on those for.
Richard Esposito: You know reservoir properties that that will be important for our for our injection modeling but then also we need to do, mechanical tests on those confining units.
Richard Esposito: me see if I can.
Richard Esposito: You know if you can see down here to the end, the image to the bottom right that's the Marine tuscaloosa shale core there so that would that would be our primary confining you to.
Richard Esposito: At the site and that's been slapped at a commercial core facility Houston and then image i'm a little bit of interesting.
Richard Esposito: findings that we've had on the core as far as acquiring It is this stuff's very poorly integrated so so it doesn't hold together, particularly well, and so we found the best way to preserve that core when it's brought up onto the surface is to epoxy stabilize it.
Richard Esposito: What you see in this sorry about that, when you see this image to the upper left.
Richard Esposito: As a core taken from a website that was actually right there at the power plant, you can see that in the background in the foreground though you see.
Richard Esposito: One of the sections of the core barrel like cut it up captain and then inject epoxy into the core barrel there's an inlet line and outlet line they feel the entire Angeles between the core and the core Merrill with epoxy.
Richard Esposito: And again, that stabilizes the core and and and then they refrigerate it bring it back to the lab and it's preserved beautifully if we do that, but if we don't do that just the jarring and then.
Richard Esposito: The rough handling Apps to core what's brought up on the surface can destabilize it considerably.
Richard Esposito: And then the image, you see, on the bottom left is actually from from drone shot from a from a previous well, one of the 2017 wells, and you can see.
Richard Esposito: You can see the website during active drilling operations, it looks identical if if folks have ever been on a conventional.
Richard Esposito: convertible well drilling program for oil and gas it's almost exactly the same view that you would see there.
Richard Esposito: And we use a lot of the same technologies actually almost all the same technologies for drilling a well.
Richard Esposito: We just are what we really need to concentrate on we drill these wells if we're using them for for geologic testing, we want to drill a nice engage well That way we can get good log data from it.
Richard Esposito: If we want to use that well for CO2 storage monitoring, later on, we also have to drill a nice well that's engaged.
Richard Esposito: But answer to try to prevent wash outs, you know if you're drilling a well, and you have a certain diameter of the bit, and then you wash out some of these sandy zones.
Richard Esposito: that's going to make it hard to get a nice cement job or up the cases and one thing that certainly requirement for CO2 storage wells be at monitoring wells or injection wells is a really high end.
Richard Esposito: stuff cement john.
Richard Esposito: If you talk cross section between three of the wells that that we've drilled so far, the one in the middle, which is actually from a well that was drilled into them.
Richard Esposito: Earlier this year, to the.
Richard Esposito: left and right on this image our belts, the southwest and northeast that were drilled in 2017 what you're seeing here is the shaded curve is a gamma Ray curve.
Richard Esposito: So it's deflected the laugh we've kind of given lighter colors and those are indicating your sand units and then where it's where the darker shade of those are your mud stone units, this is an entirely classic section through here where we've got the storage geology.
Richard Esposito: So the policy with this formation that's at the bottom of our storage section it's a highly layered interval you've got sandstone bodies there's thing as 40 feet, some of them are multi story sounds that are amalgamated and up to 100 feet thick, this is a flu legal system.
Richard Esposito: Safe same story in the in The Wall Street or fredericksburg in the middle part of the wash read another aggregate.
Richard Esposito: aggregation of flew to San standard package, but here you've got you've got a lot of sandstone stacking and so you've got individual bodies are approaching.
Richard Esposito: 100 feet and this you know this middle interval this 400 foot or so interval in the middle of the blocks or middle of the wash Fred is this, you know over 90% net sandstone lot of CO2 storage capacity there.
Richard Esposito: And then i'm sorry presentations autoplay itself so i'm sorry slides move around a little bit, but back to this, the shallow section for storage you've got the top of the wash Fred.
Richard Esposito: it's called the dancer saying and then directly above it you've got the lower tuscaloosa massive sin that's about 3500 feet depth.
Richard Esposito: And, and that that together that average is about 170 feet or so and that sansom fitness.
Richard Esposito: And so the you know the seals these these these higher gamma Ray units that you're seeing those those are you know major milestone us that can be correlated among three wells and, in fact, if you can correlate those some of those oil oil wells.
Richard Esposito: You know we've interpreted those and then the geologists of the project team interpreted those of having high probability of regional lateral continuity.
Richard Esposito: And price just said it earlier, but you know in CO2 storage.
Richard Esposito: there's kind of a minimum depth caught off that you're interested in that would be oh give or take about 2500 feet feet once you're down deeper than that.
Richard Esposito: you're going to have high enough pressure for the CO2 to be stored in a dense face the majority of the term supercritical phase when you're in a much higher storage efficiency when you're storing CO2 in the dead space.
Richard Esposito: But you know and then there's a bit of a depth caught off such that if you drill you know if you're doing CO2 storage and your wells are 12,000 feet deep.
Richard Esposito: that's a lot of pressure to push push against to do CO2 injection and so that storage sweet spot is probably from three or 4000 feet, deep down to about 10,000 feet theme.
Richard Esposito: And, of course, if you're drilling shallow or wells that saving you on saving dollars a trillion costs, so we they were kind of in that storage depth sweet spot here.
Richard Esposito: Just a couple of regional ice pack maps that we've developed from the wild data that we've acquired so far.
Richard Esposito: matt that lowest most shale on the wash brad's that caps that palazzi formations storage because of or and all those shells units together you come up with anywhere from 150 to two over 300 feet of shale.
Richard Esposito: rock you know it's averaging over 200 feet within our storage area which is kind of outline by the for wells that are identified in this image doesn't outline a camper county.
Richard Esposito: So this is multi county scale mapping we've done here.
Richard Esposito: And then the proxy formation itself if we do gross thickness map based on those as well logs both again ones that we've collected sorry and the ones that were collected prior to this.
Richard Esposito: You know, prior to our project from wildcat well drilling, you can you see a gradual thickening of the wells to their the formation, to the south.
Richard Esposito: And Southwest you know the policy is effectively on lapping on to that onto that paleozoic surface and so it's it's thinking was he moved to the as the movie the southwest.
Richard Esposito: To herself.
Richard Esposito: So just to highlight little bit of the of the studies that we've done on the confining unit's themselves and a lot of this work was led by research from Oklahoma State University so check passion and his group over there.
Richard Esposito: did a lot of description and testing of the mud rocks and the browser wars, as part of phase two and phase three of the project.
Richard Esposito: So first cool cool pictures that you see here the.
Richard Esposito: slab core images so most of this system is.
Richard Esposito: You know, is terrestrial it's flu Bo nature, about one year in when you're in the marine tuscaloosa you reach a point where you've got a pretty good that's good Lisa considerable about.
Richard Esposito: Excuse me transgression that you actually do at least have title flat deposits in the marine toss a guy this Gray shale, and the sea shells and pinstripe bedding etc.
Richard Esposito: When we're deeper in there, so we're within our storage reservoirs and we're looking at this MOD rocks that kind of intervene within the storage reservoirs that baffle that CO2 injection those are going to be paley assault.
Richard Esposito: So those are the fossil paleontologist be well fossil solo so you'll see cracks you'll see burrows you'll see.
Richard Esposito: retraces etc, and just as a general feature these.
Richard Esposito: You know these these are really tight shales, which is to say they have very low permeability.
Richard Esposito: they're also very soft never very pliable, and this is we're kind of in the opposite situation that one would maybe look for.
Richard Esposito: If you are interested in tight, you know if if you were at a title or as for shale gas rounds, or where you want to see brittle rock well.
Richard Esposito: We would rather have our sales be soft and pliable and have a high fracture pressure because we don't want a fracture them.
Richard Esposito: And the CO2 storage project, and so I think we've got that situation here, these are very immature shells they have very high water saturation.
Richard Esposito: And so they are again going to be unlikely to fracture and and the high water saturation to keep should keep that capillary industry pressure high.
Richard Esposito: Oklahoma State did some some tests on some of the the shale cuttings and continue to do so on on more of the other core samples, we have a commercial laboratory going same.
Richard Esposito: And the story so far is that this is very low permeability rock you see the result there on the bottom right of a pressure to K permeability test that OIC State did on a marine tuscaloosa sample and the interpretation, there is we're in we're in the 12 Nana darcy range.
Richard Esposito: So these are these are as tight as a as a as a title oil shale will be, but again unlikely to fracture so we're all indications are that these are going to be really nice CAP rocks for CO2 storage.
Richard Esposito: Alternatively, if you look at the reservoirs.
Richard Esposito: And again it's highlighted some work that was led by state and all those CO2 injection storage reservoir so the policy, the wishy fredericksburg the.
Richard Esposito: Answer Sam and the massive sand, you have a about 1300 feet of net sands been vertically it's it's pretty tremendous and i'll even more notable is that.
Richard Esposito: Based on the core work that we've done the the average mean average porosity is almost 29% and the mean average permeability is is multi darcy very forest very permeable Sam.
Richard Esposito: gets CA.
Richard Esposito: A core description that jack's group put together on the left, these are again multi storey flew vowel sounds and so you see some of those classic.
Richard Esposito: sedimentary structure that you would accept expect to see, there are some cross beds, we see some.
Richard Esposito: Some pebble lag beds interspersed throughout that oftentimes at the bottom of the sands you'll see kind of a courts and shirt pebble lag that was actually really tight zones and hard to drill through zone so it's kind of an interesting.
Richard Esposito: it's certainly an interesting system to look at and core and you know we probably expect to have these these types of lag beds act as internal baffles to CO2 injection so your CO2 plume will kind of stack on itself, as you inject it into into those types of sounds.
Richard Esposito: So let me come back to that so you know if you had CO2 and jack says, you know, obviously this is a let's imagine we have a vertical well here.
Richard Esposito: And you're checking CO2 into number CO2 is born like I maybe I mentioned that earlier, so you know it just like natural gas was like oil it's going to rise vertically.
Richard Esposito: Until it reaches an impermeable layer and so these these lag beds, such as they are will probably act as internal battles and so that CO2 is unlikely to be injected into the reservoir and immediately migrate, all the way up.
Richard Esposito: it's going to hit these battles and that's going to force it to to spread out laterally and you can imagine if it does that it's actually going to ultimately if you looked at a map view occupy.
Richard Esposito: A smaller area, then, if there was no baffles nothing present to prevent migration until it in a CAP rock your see you to just go up and then straight out and you'd have a really wide but thin plume that's what we consider we would consider a low.
Richard Esposito: Efficiency CO2 injection because we're going to have to monitor a huge area with less CO2 concentration and then, then, if we can stack the CO2 plan.
Richard Esposito: So hydro geologically.
Richard Esposito: it's it's there's there's there are some differences between the the injection reservoirs.
Richard Esposito: As I this cartoon cross section that was trawling by a geological survey Alabama goes from you know kind of northeast Alabama or some of these applications units out rob.
Richard Esposito: The Southwest and imagine our our our it says plant location and imagine this CO2 storage project occurring down here on the western part of this cross section.
Richard Esposito: Again, these these lower cretaceous units, the policy in the wash read they on lap on that paleozoic unconformity or sub mesozoic unconformity there, so their sub cropping.
Richard Esposito: And so it's effectively a stagnant ground the Hydra geologic situation there, and so those units, based on the water.
Richard Esposito: The water testing that we've done they have at 200,000 milligrams per liter poor poor water so definitely not an underground source of drinking water.
Richard Esposito: Now the tuscaloosa the lower tuscaloosa as you might imagine our crops near tuscaloosa Alabama to the Northeast and so you do have some interface with with shallower groundwater and so.
Richard Esposito: We had to carefully consider whether or not that's a potential storage reservoir and the fluid samples that we've taken to this point, show that it has 20,000 milligrams per liter of TTS total dissolved solids so it's it's screening as a.
Richard Esposito: As a potential storage reservoir However, it is going to grade into a ground up underground source of drinking water.
Richard Esposito: So the EPA has rules for.
Richard Esposito: You know what they consider of underground source of drinking water and that that's cut off is 10,000 milligrams per liter.
Richard Esposito: So, so that that reservoir is gonna have to be carefully considered as whether it's a candidate for CO2 storage, whereas the wash friend biloxi are, without a doubt, good candidates for storage.
Richard Esposito: it's a bit of an unknown actually at this point what are the USD w's directly below the site probably this utah an upper tuscaloosa some of those sounds will have less than or equal to 10,000 milligrams per liter PDS.
Richard Esposito: My folks from spectrum environmental you'll hear from.
Richard Esposito: Here from Ryan here in a little bit and i'll talk about the drone footage that they've gathered for us to show some of the well drilling operations but they're also drilling.
Richard Esposito: US dw characterization well to help us determine that the nature and characteristics of the underground source of drinking water at the wealth site.
Richard Esposito: Natural drinking water sources are up in this shallower section and Joe Cox that's also where the the calls occur that were the source of late night for the IPCC plan.
Richard Esposito: And again between actual sources of active, you know well, groundwater extraction.
Richard Esposito: And these deeper reservoirs is this huge section of porter's creek clay and Selma group and that's his that's his title rock is you're going to find.
Richard Esposito: So.
Richard Esposito: You know, as I mentioned early on the project was initially conceived as kind of being a single source that being.
Richard Esposito: The the camper county energy facility that's now been renamed plant ratcliffe take CO2 from that an objective here.
Richard Esposito: But you know plant plant reckless CO2 emissions are are less than less than what we originally anticipated them to be now originally when they were doing that late night.
Richard Esposito: gasification this was going to be three or 4 million metric tons per year of CO2 emissions to capture and storage, as a natural gas plan it's seven or 800,000 tons per year.
Richard Esposito: This site, we think can can hold potentially up to a giga tops 1000 megatons thousand million metric tons of CO2 and so it's considerably larger than the plant ratcliffe will put out in the next 30 years so we've kind of been.
Richard Esposito: shifting our focus into the idea that maybe this could act as a regional CO2 storage hub.
Richard Esposito: You know, and we can take CO2 from perhaps plant Miller, which is in the warrior base in the northern Alabama.
Richard Esposito: Obviously that's a sedimentary basins, there are rocks there that could potentially you know stores to in some of those paleozoic SUP in that basin.
Richard Esposito: But generally speaking, those are much tighter rocks than, then what we've got once we're down in the cretaceous units on the Gulf coast so and Miller is a big CO2 source you've got that one's putting out currently.
Richard Esposito: Was 20 million metric tons of CO2 per year I also i'm sorry this slide shows me a little haywire I think.
Richard Esposito: um and then also you got plant Daniel to the.
Richard Esposito: The cell that that because i'm plant miller's right now that big coal units operating it that's why produces so much CO2 Daniels got coal units and natural gas units and.
Richard Esposito: You can transport that CO2 up to our storage site so you're talking and it all together over 20 million metric tons per year.
Richard Esposito: And we've been doing modeling studies to see what what that might look like if one did a multi well CO2 injection program using all of that CO2 and injecting it here.
Richard Esposito: At the Eco site.
Richard Esposito: stacking the CO2 as I was mentioning your previous slides into those three storage, though, and so that the conceptual modeling i'm showing from the bottom you've got 21 injection wells each into those three reservoirs.
Richard Esposito: up with a plume that's 50,000.
Richard Esposito: that's certainly going to sound like.
Richard Esposito: A very large.
Richard Esposito: plume a plume size and it is without a doubt, but that's not too far off of what what you'll see when people model other CO2 injection projects but they're not modeling 670 million metric tons so it's actually a pretty concentrated CO2 storage project from that perspective.
Richard Esposito: So last big picture slide about where we are on call checks so again this.
Richard Esposito: Was God, they have.
Richard Esposito: 14 hear more of up next and then that reservoir properties.
Richard Esposito: there's low permeability ceiling strata, both in between and above this storage zones that that we think will provide excellent.
Richard Esposito: there's a stack storage potential.
Richard Esposito: camper, as I mentioned, you know you got three different reservoir to stack up the storage and so.
Richard Esposito: Our modeling suggest you could accept 700 almost 700 million metric tons of CO2 or more over 30 year ejection project.
Richard Esposito: So our goals here for the for the remainder of this phase of the project, which goes for another two and a half to three years are that characterization of the underground sources of drinking water.
Richard Esposito: The acquisition of surface seismic.
Richard Esposito: Data set, and this is we're going to do a series of 2d lines something 7080 miles of line miles of 2d seismic I showed you that seismic image from.
Richard Esposito: Earlier in the presentation that will actually comes from you know some some exploratory seismic work that was done.
Richard Esposito: In the 1980s and so we're going to tie our new seismic into that kind of confirm what we what we think we know about the structural geology out here, which is that probably for lodging GSA folks is really boring structural geology but for us it's what we like to see which is no fault.
Richard Esposito: Really, no structure to speak of other than again a pretty.
Richard Esposito: Normal thumb down to the Gulf dip have a less than a degree.
Richard Esposito: there's a big milestone at the end of the stage of the project, and that is to apply for an acquire an EPA regulated CO2 storage permit.
Richard Esposito: So oh about.
Richard Esposito: I guess over 10 years ago EPA came out with.
Richard Esposito: A new classification of underground injection the troll wells call classics and those governed CO2 storage wells.
Richard Esposito: And now, there are only two to class six wells active in the country, those are up in the Illinois basin the Illinois decatur project, you can even Google that.
Richard Esposito: it's a really interesting project in that case there that cassie he has been captured from a be ethanol plant that Archer Daniels Midland operates on storage in the mouth Simon formation.
Richard Esposito: And then there's been a handful of other classics permits that have been issued on the Illinois basin, interestingly, at this point.
Richard Esposito: But, but the historically they've taken a long time to issue.
Richard Esposito: And so EPA is.
Richard Esposito: You know, trying to get to the point where they're able to issue port permits, you know, assuming that they're good, high quality submissions.
Richard Esposito: more rapidly than they were in the past and and at the same time there's a big.
Richard Esposito: Interest in CO2 storage there's a recently enhanced tax credit for CO2 storage from.
Richard Esposito: Middle and large sized projects it's called the section 45 Q tax credit.
Richard Esposito: And, and what it is, is that you can get up to $50 per ton of CO2 storage you get demonstrate long term safe CO2 stick permanent CO2 storage.
Richard Esposito: And so to get that you're probably gonna need a class six permit if you're if you're injecting into sailing reservoirs and so there's a big backlog of classics permits being put together goodness is that's a lot of lot of work for geologists and engineers to do to put those together.
Richard Esposito: You know, there are a lot, but I think it's safe to say, this will have to be reviewed and and stamped by professional geologists in almost every case, and so you know for folks out there, that are not sure what to think about the entire CCS business or.
Richard Esposito: or where geologist fits in you know in this this expert will call it exploration for storage prospects and permitting.
Richard Esposito: it's very tried and true geology and the background that you folks have if they're structural or sedimentary geologists, particularly those that may have a little bit of petroleum geology.
Richard Esposito: background, it can segue pretty easily into this so i'd encourage you all to look into the CCS business, as it were, look up presentations follow on in the.
Richard Esposito: In the CCS section I think part of the meeting here GSA i'm sure will continue to to support you know CCS in their set and their meetings a PG American association petroleum geologist is starting to really do the same thing so.
Richard Esposito: This is a great time to get interested in this topic.
Richard Esposito: Though I, the last thing that we're doing now is as part of this phase, the project, as I mentioned really early on that.
Richard Esposito: This phase of the project, where we're looking at the entire integrated business model, so the capture of the CO2 transporter the CO2 and storage of the CO2.
Richard Esposito: And I know we're all geologists we could care less about the capturing and CO2 because that's some chemical engineers job that's actually the costliest and probably the biggest technological hurdle that has to be overcome, for this whole process if you had to.
Richard Esposito: If someone said, you know how much the CO2 storage costs.
Richard Esposito: You know, letting suffice to say it's 70% or maybe considerably more of it is in the capturing of the CO2 and compressing it it's that it's in that dense phase.
Richard Esposito: You know, maybe 10% or more of it 10 20% of it is in the transportation in the last 10% of it or last name is on the storage side of it, so the big costs.
Richard Esposito: Are on the the capture side unless they're selling the transport side, so all that stuff has to go on in the background, while, while the rest of us are interested in the storage side of it in the geology side of it.
Richard Esposito: So i'm going to do now is kind of segue over into some some images of the the drilling operations for the well that we're at the site have now, so this well as the.
Richard Esposito: Mississippi power company oh one dash one well the one one just as an indication of where it's located which which township it's in.
Richard Esposito: And this well as a strata graphic test well.
Richard Esposito: So what that means is this well has been at this point drilled we gather geologic data from it and then it's been plugged with cement plugs and has been abandoned so it's it's a strat test.
Richard Esposito: Previous wells of you drilled as part of this project, were we were there, the primary goal was it was always been the gather geologic data for for storage characterization.
Richard Esposito: But some of those we lacked in us in a State, such that they could they could potentially act as monitoring wells in the future for CO2 storage and the big difference would be that, as well as have.
Richard Esposito: Have casing that was installed yes metal casing install all the way to their total depth and that casing was cemented in place.
Richard Esposito: that's not the case with this as well, so you can obviously drill more strategy graphic test wells for the for the same amount of money as a few monitoring wells because you're save yourself a lot of.
Richard Esposito: A lot of time and effort not case in them so where it made sense we kept them.
Richard Esposito: As potential monitoring wells, and where where we just wanted to gather data for for locations that are kind of on the outside of the potential storage field, which is what this one is they made sense as a drill them and abandonment.
Richard Esposito: So, as you can imagine, you know you need a an acre more of location to do a deep well drilling project and so some images here are showing up the initial well site clearing.
Richard Esposito: The octave imagine that not only do you need about an acre of well site, but it needs to be flat, but a large size through rate on to it.
Richard Esposito: And so, even in parts, the world that we don't consider particularly hilly even though we're in the hilly district of Mississippi a lot of dirt work has to happen before we drill wells So these are just some images of early on, where their grading the location.
Richard Esposito: image of the bottom here they put them at this point they flipboard mats down when we walk outside on a walk outside her a minute.
Richard Esposito: But don't drop the laptop hopefully they'll see the world the site and the more mats are still on there and that that's kind of requirement if you're drilling in the southeast, particularly in the winter and early spring.
Richard Esposito: When it rains it pours here when it rains it pours it gets really muddy gumbo, as they say, and it's impossible to work out here so that's just a something we need to deal with we're drilling deep wells with heavy equipment out here in the wet season, which is most of the year.
Richard Esposito: This image down here at the bottom it's up with a call sputtering it's a relatively small size rig and.
Richard Esposito: When you drill a well, even if you don't plan to use it for for long term monitoring your there's a couple of strings of case in that you're always going to have to install the first what's called the conductor casing your conductor pipe.
Richard Esposito: Now these are really small rig to install that and that that's usually 16 to 20 inches or so in diameter and that's really just to to hold back the.
Richard Esposito: You know the really soft sediment them I sloughing on your well, while you're drilling and so that's that's actually some conductor pipe being installed and they'll you know.
Richard Esposito: they'll drill that to 6080 to 100 feet deep till they start to get to the rock and they know they've put that in place Doug route that.
Richard Esposito: When they do drill out of that you'll you'll be required by the state.
Richard Esposito: In all cases, to to install what they call surface casing or ground water protection casing so you'll have to put in some antenna cases during that content prevents underground sources of drinking water, so this well does have a does have a surface case extreme events and in place.
Richard Esposito: But here's what the site looks like i'm looking down the.
Richard Esposito: Road during active well drilling operations you'll see some spectacular drone footage here just in in a little bit of what it looks like when you know when we were doing the cementing a while, but this is during the drilling operations.
Richard Esposito: You can see kind of in the foreground here's the budget drill pipe.
Richard Esposito: So if anyone's ever not been on any kind of well site, if you can imagine it.
Richard Esposito: you're you've got your drill bit that's going down down underground and then you've got this rigid drill pipe that's that's um that's what holding that bit and rotating to do the drilling.
Richard Esposito: And so, you know as you're moving down the well, you have to keep making up more and more drill pipe fittings as you move down in our case, you had to make that make up 5700 feet worth of those.
Richard Esposito: Then we'll say 30 foot or so drill pipe fittings together that's what keeps the drill crew busy 24 hours a day is putting that drill pipe together when they trip out of the whole take every well every other one apart, they stack it up on the.
Richard Esposito: On the Derek and when you when you see the drone footage you be able to see what it looks like when they stack all the drill pipe vertically Derek what they're pulling out of the whole.
Richard Esposito: bunch of crew trailers etc over here in this one of the far rights, in fact, the one that we're we're we're hosting this this field trip from as we speak.
Richard Esposito: But typically if you're going deep well drilling you'll have.
Richard Esposito: you'll have your drilling crew living out here and you'll have two shifts working, each with a 12 hour shift, and you know this is there's.
Richard Esposito: No plus or minus five or so folks on each shift, and you know again when they're off shift there they're living out here, because often well sites are in fairly remote location, then it just doesn't make sense for them to be commuting back and forth for hotels.
Richard Esposito: And, in particular during coven times it's actually considerably safer to have folks.
Richard Esposito: More or less will say in a bubble here and apart, if you will, on location and not driving back and forth or hotels, or anything like that.
Richard Esposito: You know drilling chemicals are over here on the left, so you know when you drill a well.
Richard Esposito: That same drill pipe you're actually sending mud drilling mud down that it blasts out of some some jets there at the drill bit, which is, which is rotating and then on the outside of the drill pipe you're lifting that mud up and all the rock cuttings are coming up along with it.
Richard Esposito: And you want to keep you know particular properties of the mud, so that it holds the reservoir back on hold sorry holds the rock face back and you drill a nice clean well.
Richard Esposito: And you're officially living lifting those rock cuttings out of the well That way, you can you can continue to penetrate but um.
Richard Esposito: And so, those with those chemicals are foreign when when we share the drone footage you be able to see some of the.
Richard Esposito: The infrastructure, the background or they're doing this mud circulation is what they call closed loop drilling process so that you're sending them down the hall it's lifting that same the cuttings back out of the hole.
Richard Esposito: And then, this process that occurs at the background here you're taking this cuttings this rock chips out of it you're making sure that the mud is still on the right condition that you wanted to the right.
Richard Esposito: Technology and the right chemistry and then sending that same same fluid back down the well that's why they call it a closed loop system, so it.
Richard Esposito: uses less fluid and it gets away without having to have a big reserve pawn and things like that, on the site to handle this fluid so it's a cleaner location.
Richard Esposito: drilling a deep well like this as a 24 seven operation nights weekends rain shine you name it.
Richard Esposito: You know there's thunderstorms if there's lightning they obviously will pause drilling about anything sort of that.
Richard Esposito: they're continuing operations so just just an images of some different weather situations that one of the problem looks like they're spraying system moving through.
Richard Esposito: If you all are in the southeastern GSA so you know that it rains a lot in the southeast and so these guys are unfortunately having to work out in the rain.
Richard Esposito: quite a bit, and then the image, the bottom, of course, is probably nice weather but nighttime thrilling, and so they have a lot of light plants etc out here, so they can operate safely at night and again with with multiple shifts of drillers they can be operating this 24 hours a day.
Richard Esposito: Okay, so geologists folks that are that are asleep, you could wake yourself up if you didn't really care about what a while site looks like from drilling here's some rocks.
Richard Esposito: Or at least some heat up pieces of water ah nice rocks so the so we have a well side geologists crew out here.
Richard Esposito: Whenever we're drilling deep well sometimes they'll call mud loggers there's what they're doing is collecting samples of this drill cuttings as they're being circulated out of the well.
Richard Esposito: And describing them for us and telling us you know here here's what rock type we're drilling through and and then we we compare that to well logs and data from all set wells and say Oh, I think we're in the lower tuscaloosa Oh, I think we're we're you know we're not.
Richard Esposito: Where we think we are, which is worrisome but firstly hasn't happened on this well so they're giving us a little logic description of what they're seeing coming out from the underground.
Richard Esposito: And so here's some of the the cutting samples, these are approximately every 20 feet.
Richard Esposito: And so, these are the last samples that were taken.
Richard Esposito: From this well and so those are and that this the risk of the giving everyone a whiplash let me scroll back here.
Richard Esposito: To the column.
Richard Esposito: Those last samples are from this these paley's it says it says pottsville that they are in fact warrior basin paleozoic said they might be a pottsville equivalent but suffice to say their ratios, and the reason that we're not exactly sure if they're.
Richard Esposito: If they're warrior base in paley's Alex wash tall paleozoic says, you know there's not really anything diagnostic that we've seen on the cottage or anything like that to tell us one from the other but suffice to say.
Richard Esposito: They are brittle Gray too dark Gray shales i'm sorry i'm scrolling through this again.
Richard Esposito: That tell us that we're out of the storage reservoir so once we drill all about 60 or 80 feet, through these.
Richard Esposito: that's where we're reaching told that, for the well, and the reason we drill down into these little ways that way when we use our well logging tools and that way we can love it and those are course have you know they'll have.
Richard Esposito: rods at the bottom of them to make sure that they get to the bottom of the hole and make sure that we can log all the way across our infection also has a drone with it a little bit of rat hole below our transport.
Richard Esposito: But here you'll see some of those some of those nice biloxi sand stones, you know it just aggregates obviously as it's coming up out of the well because, again, these are very soft.
Richard Esposito: fully integrated Sam so it looks like saying when they're bringing it up and occasionally you'll see some of these chevallier zones, these are probably your upper palazzi read shales red and brown shells and then up here you're in this.
Richard Esposito: And this might be what sheet or friends or expired, really, really, really clean flew bial sands up here shallower in the section.
Richard Esposito: that's what the monologue trailer looks like case anyone thinks it looks like a glamorous gig that obviously is also working 24 hour shifts you'll have daytime loggers and nighttime loggers.
Richard Esposito: And and and.
Richard Esposito: If this was a conventional oil and gas well drilling project, not only are they looking at little ufology but they're looking for indications hydrocarbon and see see the black light there they'll look under the.
Richard Esposito: Block like to see if they see any fluorescence which would indicate, obviously in a while show.
Richard Esposito: And then run and they'll have a gas chromatograph and you can barely maybe see that here you've got the gas coming out about boiling through here and going into the chromatograph and it's it's not only telling you how much gas is coming out of the well with usually they'll have.
Richard Esposito: With the with the gc on there they'll tell you a little bit of you know what see one through six plus but the proportions, the different hydrocarbons are coming out of there.
Richard Esposito: we're not looking for hydrocarbons, here we haven't really found any, which is, I think, to be expected you you don't really have a good source rock you don't have a mature so restaurant let's try that again.
Richard Esposito: In the in that cretaceous tertiary section this stuff's has never been buried deep enough to degenerate hydrocarbons, even those.
Richard Esposito: little bits of organic carbon better, for example, the numbering tuscaloosa ubc Papa gas once you get down to the paleozoic but not enough to excite one to think of this as a potential hydrocarbon producing region.
Richard Esposito: The image of the rights kind of grainy it's because it's taken at night, this is up a wireline tool being lowered into the well it's kind of an old you know, oil and gas.
Richard Esposito: ISM which invariably adds up true that logging never occurs during daylight hours certainly cementing never occurs, or any of the field activities that are really.
Richard Esposito: Important or interesting never occurred a time that is convenient if they do occur in the day time it's always raining foul weather so.
Richard Esposito: When we were doing the wireline logging on this well, it was it was, I think all at night.
um.
Richard Esposito: So yeah last slide i'll show is is for this part of the presentation is that you know this well will be permanently plugged in abandoned, so there they'll send a series of cement blogs as they've moved out of the well.
Richard Esposito: And then, once they break down, which is unfortunately what they're doing now, when I say unfortunately because, not a particularly excited.
Richard Esposito: To be hosting virtual field trip once they're fully rigged down they'll they'll set up the last summit plug from about 50 feet down.
Richard Esposito: Up to ground surface they'll cut the casing off remember that does have the surface casing and the conductor type below ground surface and then and then bury it and so there'll be really no indication.
Richard Esposito: That there was ever a well drill here once we reclaim the site once once we replanted new obviously enable this sport mats off replanted.
Richard Esposito: However, if this well was cat as a as a monetary well, so this isn't the most obtrusive looking thing this is, this is an image of.
Richard Esposito: One of the wells that was drilling 2017 that we kept in a condition that it can act as a CEO to monitoring, well, so we got the little well at on that and actually put a dog little dog run on it.
Richard Esposito: Which is what this chain link fences with some some bollards around it and you know it, in this case, this location, we didn't use board mats we use.
Richard Esposito: What we put a gravel based below so you end up with a small gravel field you just need to keep enough of a.
Richard Esposito: Of a flat, you know firm enough surface that you could bring logging tools out to the site and this relatively small well so.
Richard Esposito: You know if if you if you try to imagine your head, what is the CO2 storage field look like you mentioned 20 wells, you know, plus you know, maybe 20 more monitoring wells, what is this going to look like the surface of Mars now it's going to be.
Richard Esposito: You know, there will be if this was an injection well you'd have pipe coming out of the ground relatively close to it with the CO2 and then going down the wellhead.
Richard Esposito: Most.
Richard Esposito: else is underground as far as the the surface, the surface CO2 infrastructure.
Richard Esposito: If there's if there's booster pumps and things like that those will probably be over at the power plants site.
Richard Esposito: And then the monitoring wells really look a lot like this, so it's actually pretty on a truce of thing to have a if one lived over a CO2 storage site I don't think they're they're ever going to really get any impact from it visually or any other.
Richard Esposito: So now's the time of the presentation, where i'm going to.
Richard Esposito: Show you guys what things look like outside and so we'll see how this works Richard insisted on this, because we all drove down here, and so we want to show everyone evidence that damn it we did make it out in the field, and we want to show you what it looks like.
Richard Esposito: So let me get mass up.
Richard Esposito: You want to hold it out alright so.
Richard Esposito: We got to geologist trying to do this.
Richard Esposito: project will see.
Richard Esposito: Alright, so you barely see my as.
Richard Esposito: You can see up there, the.
Richard Esposito: Real REG it said that the Derek of the throw rug it's still it's still sat up.
Richard Esposito: Probably later this afternoon, this evening, nothing lower down because we've ever done really well gather the data that we need we effectively done a fan.
Richard Esposito: Last surface.
Richard Esposito: The surface.
Richard Esposito: On these these sites original one school ever this might look like we didn't have that that's that's firmed up a little bit, but if you can imagine if Rachel over there, you can somebody passing lanes and all.
Richard Esposito: These board mats are kind of a necessity.
Richard Esposito: Given.
Richard Esposito: See that's the patient.
Richard Esposito: Do that yeah no no that's perfect.
Richard Esposito: So it's not showing this out here, well, I was it was really small.
Richard Esposito: So I stopped the presentation so i'm not sure if there's a way to make.
Richard Esposito: It make it bigger and fit full screen, maybe folks you're not.
Richard Esposito: A GSA could do that the.
Richard Esposito: spotlight for real let's try that all right sorry about that again hot wallet this.
Richard Esposito: Anyway, I guess that's the.
Richard Esposito: Beauty 17 wtf the thrilling company that we use to the contract is thrilled as well.
Richard Esposito: This will be the one dash one well so on the fifth while that we build this bar and this bar graph well feature total depth 5007.
Richard Esposito: This is the same drill rick you would use to grow and oil and gas exploration well same same same hands, that you would use out here to do it.
Richard Esposito: Some of the geologic testing that we do is a little bit different than what they would be doing a lot of early analysis thrown.
Richard Esposito: board minutes yeah.
Richard Esposito: We talked about this before use the word maps that higher acre size, location, Richard shown Now this is this would be the sandy money, I asked that we'd be dealing with if we didn't have the board mats out here do we dare go try to look at the robot.
Richard Esposito: That will.
Richard Esposito: So.
Richard Esposito: Actually slightly kind of interesting what they're bringing around here as for folks that have either been working on gas site.
Richard Esposito: Or maybe Fred another key part of horizon blow out when they had issues with a law firm vendor that's part of the guys lowering.
Richard Esposito: That list over there as part of the flop prevention system, so any deep value drill CO2 storage prospecting well.
Richard Esposito: or no gas for the older far that that block prevention system, and so what that guy could do them all sudden, we had a big pressure is rams can smash the drill.
Richard Esposito: Those are the the blind land over there that again hydroponically absolutely smashed well, so the same safety procedures that we have in place for oil and gas on, even if we don't expect to see it, you have to have in place are going to food storage was.
Richard Esposito: Going back in and look around alright so we're gonna go back inside now and the books expected, let me show you some students nearly the throne.
Richard Esposito: So next we want to introduce the folks from spectrum environmental i'll let will let them introduce themselves and they came out and they really interesting neat application of using a drone to actually.
Richard Esposito: Film the site and we're going to show you some video footage is from that.
Richard Esposito: Okay, everyone i'm Ryan, Catherine was spectrum.
Richard Esposito: And as Richard and Dave have already said, we were able to help with this presentation about providing some drone footage which data is pulling off right here and it's not sharing it's a disturbing okay so we're sharing it here shortly yeah.
Richard Esposito: So now's push this agenda, hopefully, everyone can see that.
Richard Esposito: Now this this footage was taken with a dji maverick drone with a 4k camera.
Richard Esposito: April hide, who is also here with us she's our drone operator spectrum, we think this is a good way for not only provide convenience but also safety as people are trying to observe social distancing right now and and other things that this hopefully provides another aspect of this.
Richard Esposito: field trip that's you guys can see exactly what's kind of going on here.
Richard Esposito: Here we have.
Richard Esposito: You can see the squad large operation.
Richard Esposito: And this is a was taken yesterday pre recorded as of right now they're still disassembling the whole operation so Luckily, we were able to get here yesterday, while things are still.
Richard Esposito: up and about and get some good footage.
Richard Esposito: As Dave mentioned earlier spectrum is also be participating in the assistance of the USD wl hopefully we can.
Richard Esposito: assist in the gathering of that baseline geochemical data in order to.
Richard Esposito: Ensure that we're protecting the underground sources, the drinking water.
Richard Esposito: project as well, for those of us for those of you don't know who spectrum is we are a environmental consulting group located in alabaster Alabama we also have offices in nashville and vote bill.
Richard Esposito: we're very thankful for everyone involved, and especially for allowing us to participate with That being said, i'll give it back to Richard and let him take over here.
Richard Esposito: Dave is going to come back to give a little more tutorial on the drilling out from.
Richard Esposito: yeah let me i'm.
Richard Esposito: Building my way back in here just to so as Ryan mentioned April took this this footage yesterday, while we were.
Richard Esposito: While they were cementing the well and stop pause it here in a moment just to show off a little bit of what what you're seeing.
Richard Esposito: So these trucks, the they got these they call teardrops in on those are the cement trucks there mixing up the samantha they're using upon the well and these, and you know injecting them into the.
Richard Esposito: End of the well and they think these plugs are said that you know from 4000 to 2000 feet and adapt to.
Richard Esposito: Your settings plugs to to seal off potential storage wars, you have to set plugs to to protect underground sources, drinking water and eventually they'll set that that surface plug.
Richard Esposito: Let me see what else we have we can have a little bit more.
Richard Esposito: When we look at the other side of the rig maybe we'll see a little bit of that that mud system.
Richard Esposito: alright.
Richard Esposito: This whole.
Richard Esposito: All this stuff in the back, is where the mud is getting recycled to drill a well there's a lot to it.
Richard Esposito: So you know the the mud, and the cuttings are coming out of here on you can't really see it very well in this image, but there's what they call shale shaker right there.
Richard Esposito: right there is there's these screens and all the mud and gunk and cuttings or get poured out on there and it's shaking and that's why it's called shaker and all the mud is dripping down through it.
Richard Esposito: And it gets recycled through it gets remixed and recycle through this whole train here, and then the cuttings themselves they're collected here and eventually end up in a in the storage base and over here.
Richard Esposito: And so the onsite geologists the mud loggers they're coming in and taking that there's this cutting samples right off the shaker screen there.
Richard Esposito: So that's right there so again, our operations are over there actually they pulled off the cuttings this was the, this is the tank they were being collected and you can even see someone that's starting to clean out those tanks.
Richard Esposito: This is that drill piping stacked up so you can imagine, this is Oh, they have is how long speech drop George typically.
Richard Esposito: it's usually going to do so it's somewhere between 25 to 30 Okay, so thank you, so this is maybe 60 feet or so of us two sections of drill pie put together.
Richard Esposito: So you can imagine, this is a natural pipe if you if you lower one piece down screwed an excellent and they called making a pipe and lowered it in that's bleeding out a mile worth of pipe all stacked up together, which is a which is pretty pretty incredible to me.
Richard Esposito: When they lay down the drill pipe they.
Richard Esposito: or corky pull it out of the well it gets lowered on this, the catwalk there and then they'll roll it on to these.
Richard Esposito: These support beans here and that's where they live, it off.
Richard Esposito: So that's just a little bit of what's going on in the background of this image again, you know wt is a contractor that's drilling the wells for us.
Richard Esposito: If I was drilling oil and gas well in the region, I would use the same drillers and use a lot of the same approach that we're doing in this, so you know I just.
Richard Esposito: there's a lot of different ways is geologists to come into the CC us business I think if you're a structural geologists sedimentary geologist geochemistry geochemists because you are going to have to study.
Richard Esposito: And and predict CO2 interaction with with groundwater and with you know with the mineralogy that's part of your permitting process is to be able to model that.
Richard Esposito: You know Ryan and April or with spectrum there environmental geologists so there's certainly a big role for them.
Richard Esposito: So you know, again, I just want to mention that again if this the first time you've seen anything related to carbon capture and utilization storage.
Richard Esposito: As a geologist that doesn't mean that you know you're you're behind the eight ball, this is a kind of an emerging field and.
Richard Esposito: And you know more than you think you know about CO2 storage geology if you kind of just think about it for a little while, so I just encourage people to read up on it, studying and I think I think opportunities are going to keep.
Richard Esposito: keep growing in that field so that's my little spiel before i'll turn it over to Richard.
Richard Esposito: To I think open up for questions.
Richard Esposito: So let me stop this and say Thank you everyone very much i'm happy to answer questions.
Richard Esposito: yeah so we've had some time for some Q amp a and those would be in the chat box, if you want to submit some questions also I wanted to recognize lauren.
Richard Esposito: beckenham at auburn university, who is actually the Co Chair of the field if she wasn't able to make it here she's back in the office but lauren is a good example of when Jay.
Richard Esposito: Dave was saying a geochemist Warren has done a lot of work on these projects at looking at the reactions of the CO2 and the reservoirs and.
Richard Esposito: mineralization reactions and how the trapping mechanisms are going to be moving forward, as you inject CO2 into these reservoirs so let's go to the chat I see that we have a few questions.
Richard Esposito: let's see well, I thought we had some questions.
Richard Esposito: yeah so no actually we don't have any questions so if people want to submit some questions we're more than happy to take questions at this time.
Richard Esposito: And, and like Dave said we we would have liked to been had active drilling going on the timing of this just fell to where they were rigging down the drill rig at this point so we were hoping to actually show.
Richard Esposito: You know the the drilling process, but you know we couldn't we couldn't plan that out, but, but at least the drill rig was here, and it was up and they able to get a look at it.
Richard Esposito: So i'm encouraging people to send in questions and.
Richard Esposito: Well, so if we don't have any questions I guess we'll we'll conclude the field trip early I wanted to also apologize, I know some of you had some problems getting on, there was some glitches in the system and hopefully they'll work that out.
Richard Esposito: i'm going to talk to GSA and hopefully we'll be able to post the field trip, so that everyone can see it from from the entirety so with that I appreciate everybody.
Richard Esposito: Participating today, and I hope this was an educational event, and please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions regarding carbon storage to me or Dave the folks at IRI are the folks that we've been using for all of our projects, so you can contact them directly.
Richard Esposito: You know, and in the future, maybe we'll have more events like this and.
Richard Esposito: Honestly, if code wasn't going on and we were a little closer to auburn we would have offered for people to come to the site and firsthand so let's see the drilling opportunities so thanks everyone for joining and have a good have a good rest of the week, thank you. Richard Esposito: Honestly, if code wasn't going on and we were a little closer to auburn we would have offered for people to come to the site and firsthand so let's see the drilling opportunities so thanks everyone for joining and have a good have a good rest of the week, thank you.