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Petrobras Contracts Halliburton for São Tomé CCS Pilot Wells
Petrobras has contracted Halliburton to drill and complete four onshore wells for the São Tomé saline reservoir carbon capture and storage pilot project in Brazil.
petrobras.com.br
Petrobras has executed an agreement with Halliburton Produtos Ltda for the drilling and completion of four onshore wells at the Barra do Furado Station in Quissamã, Rio de Janeiro. The wells are part of the São Tomé CCS Pilot Project, an onshore development engineered to capture, transport via pipeline, and store industrial carbon dioxide in a deep saline reservoir.
Well Construction and Operational Timeline
The drilling scope comprises one vertical injection well and three directional monitoring wells. Drilling, well completion, and surface infrastructure installation are scheduled for completion by 2028.
The project targets capturing and storing up to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually over a three-year injection lifecycle starting in 2029, followed by an additional three-year reservoir monitoring period.
Technology Integration and Monitoring Architecture
The pilot facility integrates several monitoring and material technologies:
- Plume Tracking: Fiber optic cable deployment along the wellbore to deliver continuous, real-time tracking of the subterranean carbon dioxide plume migration.
- Reservoir Fluid Sampling: Downhole sampling systems designed to extract fluid samples without requiring mechanical well intervention.
- Metallurgy and Tubulars: Carbon dioxide-resistant alloys selected to mitigate downhole corrosion.
- Non-Metallic Casing: Fiberglass casing sections integrated into the monitoring wells to permit nuclear magnetic resonance logging for subsurface data collection.
Regulatory and R&D Objectives
Operating as a Research, Development, and Innovation initiative, the São Tomé Carbon Storage Center provides a real-world testing baseline for Brazilian regulatory bodies, including the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) and the State Environmental Institute (INEA). The operational data and testing protocols gathered during the pilot are intended to establish technical benchmarks and regulatory frameworks for commercial-scale geological carbon storage within the country.
Additional Context
This section details technical specifications not included in the original news release.
Geological carbon storage in deep saline aquifers requires injecting carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, where it exhibits gas-like diffusion rates and liquid-like density to optimize reservoir volume utilization. Supercritical injection typically occurs at depths exceeding 800 meters, where ambient subsurface pressures exceed 7.38 megapascals and temperatures surpass 31.1 degrees Celsius. In these formations, containment integrity relies on a multi-tier trapping hierarchy consisting of structural or stratigraphic trapping beneath impermeable caprock (such as shale or anhydrite), capillary or residual trapping within pore spaces, solubility trapping as the carbon dioxide dissolves into formation brine, and long-term mineral trapping through precipitation reactions with reservoir rock matrices.
Fiber-optic downhole networks utilize distributed temperature sensing (DTS) and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to detect thermal anomalies and seismic signal variations caused by plume movement and fluid boundary shifts. Non-metallic fiberglass casing strings in observation wells prevent electromagnetic interference and Eddy currents, enabling cross-well electromagnetic surveys and low-frequency nuclear magnetic resonance tools to measure formation porosity, residual brine saturation, and fluid wettability directly through the pipe. Special materials used in supercritical carbon dioxide injectors typically include corrosion-resistant alloys, such as 13Cr or 22Cr duplex stainless steels, alongside carbon dioxide-resistant elastomer seals and API class G or H cement formulations blended with pozzolanic or latex additives to prevent carbonic acid leaching.
Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.
Operating as a Research, Development, and Innovation initiative, the São Tomé Carbon Storage Center provides a real-world testing baseline for Brazilian regulatory bodies, including the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) and the State Environmental Institute (INEA). The operational data and testing protocols gathered during the pilot are intended to establish technical benchmarks and regulatory frameworks for commercial-scale geological carbon storage within the country.
Additional Context
This section details technical specifications not included in the original news release.
Geological carbon storage in deep saline aquifers requires injecting carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, where it exhibits gas-like diffusion rates and liquid-like density to optimize reservoir volume utilization. Supercritical injection typically occurs at depths exceeding 800 meters, where ambient subsurface pressures exceed 7.38 megapascals and temperatures surpass 31.1 degrees Celsius. In these formations, containment integrity relies on a multi-tier trapping hierarchy consisting of structural or stratigraphic trapping beneath impermeable caprock (such as shale or anhydrite), capillary or residual trapping within pore spaces, solubility trapping as the carbon dioxide dissolves into formation brine, and long-term mineral trapping through precipitation reactions with reservoir rock matrices.
Fiber-optic downhole networks utilize distributed temperature sensing (DTS) and distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to detect thermal anomalies and seismic signal variations caused by plume movement and fluid boundary shifts. Non-metallic fiberglass casing strings in observation wells prevent electromagnetic interference and Eddy currents, enabling cross-well electromagnetic surveys and low-frequency nuclear magnetic resonance tools to measure formation porosity, residual brine saturation, and fluid wettability directly through the pipe. Special materials used in supercritical carbon dioxide injectors typically include corrosion-resistant alloys, such as 13Cr or 22Cr duplex stainless steels, alongside carbon dioxide-resistant elastomer seals and API class G or H cement formulations blended with pozzolanic or latex additives to prevent carbonic acid leaching.
Edited by Romila DSilva, Induportals Editor, with AI assistance.
