IEAGHG Monitoring Network Meeting 2023

The 14^th IEAGHG Monitoring Network met last week (8-10 August 2023) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for another meeting packed with news and developments in monitoring CO₂ storage projects. Co-hosted by the Louisiana State University’s Petroleum Engineering Department and the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, we were warmly welcomed (figuratively and literally, with temperatures of 38°C greeting us!) at LSU’s beautiful lakefront campus.

The theme of this two-day meeting was ‘Monitoring, Commercialisation & Regulatory Developments’, with the first day dedicated to a technical deep-dive into recent developments in monitoring techniques, methods and processes aimed at monitoring experts, and day 2 was opened up to online participants too; a day aimed more at regulators and detailed discussions on current regulatory issues in monitoring. 56 attendees joined IEAGHG in person at the Lod Cook Alumni Center at LSU, with an additional 44 joining online for the second day of sessions.

Day 1 sessions included a delve into new learnings on fibre optics & low-cost monitoring technologies for subsurface seismic, along with a look into non-seismic methods. Offshore environmental monitoring and terrestrial monitoring were covered, as well as the important and timely topic of automation & integration of MMV. Day 2, the regulatory-focussed day, framed the issue / current challenges by summarising the key findings from day 1, along with a panel discussion looking at different approaches in the US, EU and Australia. International experts also informed all about developments in tools for monitoring, environmental aspects of importance and societal considerations of monitoring. To wrap up day two, a panel discussion on ‘getting to closure’ stimulated in-depth discussions on the challenges faced in this realm, and to wrap up the meeting, the closing session looked at unmet needs and recommendations to move forward in this topic.

Following the meeting, in-person participants were treated to a field trip day, where we travelled northeast of Baton Rouge to a potential CO₂ storage site, followed by a visit to LSU’s Petroleum Engineering Research, Training, & Testing (PERTT) Lab.

IEAGHG would like to thank our sponsors for this meeting, ExxonMobil and Air Products for their generosity in supporting this event, and also our esteemed international Steering Committee for their input and commitment over the past five months whilst we shaped both the technical and logistical programmes for this event. Last but not least, a big thank you to Mehdi Zeidouni and Janet Dugas from LSU for their organisation of the logistics of the meeting.

A full report of this event, including talk summaries, discussion synopses and key conclusions and recommendations, will be available from IEAGHG soon.

As a final note, we’d like to congratulate all involved – many of whom are groups and experts who have joined us at IEAGHG Monitoring Network events – on the recent good news from the Biden Administration, with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announcing up to $1.2 billion to advance the development of two commercial-scale direct air capture facilities in Texas and Louisiana: https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-announces-12-billion-nations-first-direct-air-capture