Carbon capture storage defining boundary of policy CCS1 in the East Inshore and East Offshore marine plans

asNeeded

Please note the following limitations and caveats to this dataset: Whilst saline aquifers represent significant potential for trapping buoyant fluids such as CO2, there are a number of possible limitations to using them in this way. 1. There are potential permeability barriers within the formation in various parts of the Southern North Sea Basin such as faults (which may act as intra-reservoir seals) which are clearly imaged on seismic surveys; 2. It is difficult to demonstrate that firstly the saline aquifer will not leak and secondly that significant masses of CO2 can be injected into them. Although the Bunter Sandstone is, in regional terms, sealed by the overlying Haisborough Group mudstones and halites, there are crestal faults on many of the domes and it is uncertain whether, or at what pore fluid pressure, these might leak; 3. The integrity and injectivity of individual structures cannot be estimated from the data available for the BGS study. If 3D seismic data was available and licensed, and well test data was available, it could provide a much more detailed view of the potential of an individual structure but it still would not be able to provide any guarantees about either injectivity or integrity. This could only be proved or disproved by field injection tests.