Post-doctorate research project:

Understanding gas leakage processes and seal integrity: World-wide review of CO2 and methane
surface leakages

Duration 2 yrs, from start January 2021, Total CSTJF, Pau, France in collaboration with CEREGE, Marseille

In order to better understand the conditions favourable to sealing and storing CO2 underground for
relatively long durations, the geological environments most likely to lead to leakage need to be
identified. Whilst an increasing number of case studies of natural leakage of gas to the surface or sea
floor, no overall inventory exists to review these cases and determine the most frequent geological
conditions in which leakage currently occurs in terms of tectonic context and structural configuration,
distribution of lithologies and gross depositional environments, pressure, aquifer flow and hydrocarbon
systems, heat flow. The aim of this project is to understand the general types of geological situations
and processes susceptible to lead to seal capacity or integrity breaching and consequent leakage of gas
to the surface or shallower reservoirs.

Work performed in this post-doc will achieve this aim through careful compilation of an inventory of
published cases world-wide, along with more detailed investigations of a selected number of case
studies to better understand the leakage process and quantify the conditions in terms of pressure, seal
integrity and leakage rates. The principle stages of the post-doc project are envisaged to be:

1) A general review and compilation of a world-wide catalogue of CO2 and methane seepages from
both the public domain including published literature and databases, and in-house data in Total.
This work will provide the backbone of the project from which the inventory will be made
through mapping of these cases both geographically and geologically, with particular attention
to the geological environment and tectonic setting;
2) In-depth research of a small number of selected case studies which cover the range of critical
geological parameters such as sedimentary environment, tectonic setting and stress framework
and the origin, depth and pressure of the gas, in order to improve our understanding of the
leakage mechanisms. This work will lead to estimations of the rates of flow over a range of
timescales and how this depends in a quantitative way on parameters such as pressure, stress
state, structural geometries and lithological distributions in order to evaluate maximum
retention pressures and controls on leakage rates;
3) Within the framework of more detailed investigations of in-house case studies, the application
of tools for detection and measurement of gas leakage will be reviewed, including existing tools
and their limitations, emerging and new tools, focusing on measurements of rates in onshore
and offshore conditions, and finally the question of representivity of measurements both within
the context of the case study and in terms of the sampling issue of detected leakages versus
global leakage that currently passes undetected.

The project will be housed in the sedimentary and structural interpretation department of Total EP in
Pau, France with support from Total’s R&D CO2 storage program, and in collaboration with Prof. Pierre
Henry from CEREGE, University of Marseille.

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