Vol. 47 | 2021

Monitoring for seismological and geochemical groundwater effects of high-volume pumping of natural gas at the Stenlille underground gas storage facility, Denmark

RESEARCH ARTICLE | SHORT
Published March 22, 2021
Trine Dahl-Jensen
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Rasmus Jakobsen
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Tina Bundgaard Bech
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Carsten Møller Nielsen
+
Christian Nyrop Albers
+
Peter H. Voss
+
Tine B. Larsen
+
RESEARCH ARTICLE | SHORT
Published March 22, 2021
Schematic showing boreholes
Abstract
Supplementary Files
Funding
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References
Keywords

CO2 storage, geochemical monitoring, induced earthquakes, natural gas storage

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Trine Dahl-Jensen, Rasmus Jakobsen, Tina Bundgaard Bech, Carsten Møller Nielsen, Christian Nyrop Albers, Peter H. Voss, Tine B. Larsen

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

GEUS Bulletin is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). This article is distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence, permitting free redistribution and reproduction for any purpose, even commercial, provided proper citation of the original work. Author(s) retain copyright over the article contents. Read the full open access policy.

Abstract

The large natural gas storage facility at Stenlille, Denmark, has been monitored to investigate the effect of pumping large amounts of gas into the subsurface. Here, we present a new dataset of microseismicity at Stenlille since 2018. We compare these data with methane in groundwater, which has been monitored since gas storage was established in 1989. Further, we conducted a controlled 172 day microcosm experiment of methane oxidation on an isolated microbial community under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. For this experiment, water was filtered from a well at Stenlille with elevated levels of thermogenic methane and ethane. No microseismic activity was detected in the gas storage area above an estimated detection level of ML 0.0 for the established network. The long-term monitoring for methane in groundwater has still only detected one leak, in 1995, related to a technical problem during injection. The microcosm experiment revealed that oxidation of methane occurred only under aerobic conditions during the experiment, as compared to anaerobic conditions, even though the filtered water was anoxic

Keywords

CO2 storage, geochemical monitoring, induced earthquakes, natural gas storage

License

Copyright (c) 2021 Trine Dahl-Jensen, Rasmus Jakobsen, Tina Bundgaard Bech, Carsten Møller Nielsen, Christian Nyrop Albers, Peter H. Voss, Tine B. Larsen

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

GEUS Bulletin is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). This article is distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence, permitting free redistribution and reproduction for any purpose, even commercial, provided proper citation of the original work. Author(s) retain copyright over the article contents. Read the full open access policy.

Supplementary Files

Funding

This work was carried out as part of the EU project SECURe, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement number 764531.

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An annual collection of articles submitted to GEUS Bulletin, published throughout 2021.

Cover photo: Wehrlé et al. 2022 (DOI:10.34194/geusb.v47.5284).

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