GEOLOGICAL RESOURCE & STORAGE MODELS: PATHS FORWARD & THE OKLAHOMA EXAMPLE

With a sense of urgency to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the energy transition is largely being implemented as the deployment of technologies as opposed to fundamental science advances. Such foci include critical mineral (CM) resource assessments, carbon-capture and storage (CCS) activities, geothermal conversion of existing oil and gas infrastructure, and hydrogen fuel (H₂) production and storage strategies. Above ground, the resource geography of solar and wind energy, and pipeline transport of CO₂ and H₂, are considered as geography, policy, and sociopolitical issues. As organizations such as the Oklahoma Geological Survey begin to take on this implementation, there is no integrated model of how these energy solutions will actually interact, including with the existing fossil-fuel economy. We present the range of Oklahoma’s activities in the context of the geologic history and basin stratigraphy, sedimentology, and tectonic history. CM enrichment follows either Proterozoic-through-Cambrian rift zones, mid-Paleozoic shale facies, compounded by Pennsylvanian basin formation and diagenesis. The last two govern the distribution of hydrocarbons in Oklahoma, controlling subsurface opportunities for CCS and H₂-storage. In turn, the basin structure of Oklahoma controls both the hydrocarbon distribution and therefore much of the existing energy infrastructure of Oklahoma. The complicated challenge is to develop a resource and storage model that spans both geologic time, statewide distances with clustered, but scattered, activities, and basin depths that can reach >10 km. In turn, resources and storage have complex relationships, with potentially mineral-producing brines accompanying hydrocarbon production, and the fossil-fuel history in turn partly determining the abundant pore space for CCS and H₂ geostorage. Lastly, approaches to geothermal energy will depend on whether enhanced-geothermal activities that can mine the deepest basinal heat are implemented, or, alternatively, deployment will be restricted to low-temperature heat pumps that simply take advantage of existing oil-and-gas boreholes. A geoscience model for how these different energy-transition components support and interfere with each other is badly needed before the policy, economics, and social-sciences of the energy transition are further established.