Petex: Designing CO₂ Injection Wells for the Morecambe Net Zero Project SPE-226811-MS
How do you design a well to inject CO₂ safely for decades? Spirit Energy's Morecambe project reveals the engineering behind the answer.
As carbon capture and storage projects move closer to large-scale deployment, operators face a challenge that is very different from traditional oil and gas production: designing wells that can safely and efficiently inject CO₂ for decades to come.
For the Morecambe Net Zero Project operated by Spirit Energy, one key question was how tubing selection would affect future injection performance. Choosing the wrong tubing size could limit injectivity, reduce operational flexibility, or introduce unnecessary costs later in the project's life. Yet understanding the long-term impact of different design options was far from straightforward.
The team needed a way to evaluate multiple well configurations, understand how they would perform under different operating conditions, and build confidence that the final design could support the project's long-term storage objectives.
Using detailed well performance modelling, engineers carried out a sensitivity study to compare tubing options and assess their impact on CO₂ injection behaviour before any final design decisions were made. This analysis was performed using PROSPER, helping the team make decisions based on engineering insight rather than conservative assumptions. [linkedin.com]
The result was a stronger technical foundation for a critical design decision within a major UK carbon storage project. More broadly, the study demonstrates how proven engineering tools are helping operators tackle the practical challenges of the energy transition, applying decades of production engineering experience to the delivery of large-scale CCS developments. [linkedin.com]
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