Texas A&M University and Oklahoma State University are moving ahead with plans for a national research center that would study how fluids tied to energy production can be stored safely deep underground, and the next step happens in College Station in two weeks.
The proposed Center for Energy-Related Geologic Storage, known as ERGS, will hold a planning meeting Nov. 5 and 6 at Texas A&M, according to the center's website. The meeting is aimed at companies that might join as industry members.
What the center would study
The center's research would focus on two broad questions: how much underground rock can hold, and what could go wrong once it is used for storage. Its website lists hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, thermal energy and compressed air among the materials it would examine.
Proposed work includes assessing storage capacity in rock formations, forecasting leaks and earthquakes that injection could trigger, measuring methane losses near old wells, and studying how communities and landowners view storage projects. One proposed project would look at Gulf Coast salt deposits as possible storage sites.
The two schools have split the work. Texas A&M brings basin-scale geology, fracture analysis, risk analysis and induced seismicity research, while Oklahoma State contributes expertise in wellbore drilling and completions, interactions between rock and fluids, and strategic communications, the center says.
Who leads it
Sherilyn Williams-Stroud, a professor of practice in geology and geophysics at Texas A&M, is listed as center director and principal investigator. The center's site lists Mileva Radonjic, a chemical engineering professor, as a site director.
Funding and timeline
ERGS is being organized as a National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Center, a model in which member companies help pay for and steer the research. It has not yet secured that federal funding.
According to the center, decisions made at the November meeting, including which projects to pursue and who sits on an industry advisory board, will shape the application the universities send to the National Science Foundation seeking first-phase money, which would formally create the center. No dollar figure for that request has been published.
