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Injection rates and cost estimates for CO2 storage in the west Mediterranean
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Injection rates and cost estimates for CO2
storage in the west Mediterranean region

Júlio Carneiro, Roberto Martinez, Isabel

Suaréz, Yassine Zarhloule & Abdelkrim
Rimi

Environmental Earth Sciences

ISSN 1866-6280

Environ Earth Sci

DOI 10.1007/s12665-015-4029-z

1 23
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 Author's personal copy
Environ Earth Sci
DOI 10.1007/s12665-015-4029-z
THEMATIC ISSUE
Injection rates and cost estimates for CO2 storage in the west
Mediterranean region
Júlio Carneiro • Roberto Martinez •
Isabel Suaréz • Yassine Zarhloule • Abdelkrim Rimi
Received: 24 February 2014 / Accepted: 5 January 2015
Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract The COMET project aimed at studying the
development of an integrated CO2 transport and storage
infrastructure for Morocco, Portugal and Spain, and
included the assessment of existing storage opportunities
and capacities. Those countries have, jointly, enough
capacity to store almost 200 years of their current CO2
emissions, but defining a cost-effective infrastructure
implies establishing the storage costs at each potential site.
This article describes the methodology pursued and the
results of that cost assessment, including the estimates
made for the annual injection rate and number of admis-
sible wells at each site. Several analytical solutions
describing the pressure build-up with CO2 injection were
applied and a total injection rate of 558 MtCO2/a was
found for the study area, although many potential sites are
uneconomical due to presenting a very low injection rate.
The storage costs spread over a very broad spectrum of
values, but around 50 % of the injection sites show storage
costs below 10 €/tCO2. Of the 43 storage clusters defined in
the study area, about 11–15 are cost-effective, depending
J. Carneiro (&)
Departamento de Geociências, Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia,
Instituto de Investigação e Formação avançada, Centro de
Geofı́sica de Évora, Universidade de Évora, Évora, Portugal
e-mail: jcarneiro@uevora.pt
R. Martinez  I. Suaréz
Instituto Geológico y Minero de España-IGME, Madrid, Spain
Y. Zarhloule
University Mohamed I, Oujda, Morocco
A. Rimi
University Mohamed V Agdal-Institut Scientifique,
Rabat, Morocco
on the emission mitigation scenario, and should be the
focus of future research.
Keywords CCS infrastructure  CO2 storage  Injection
rate  Storage costs  Pressure build-up  Morocco 
Portugal  Spain
Introduction
CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a greenhouse gas
abatement technology that can contribute up to 14 % to the
CO2 emission reduction required in 2050 to ensure that the
global temperature rise stays below 2 °C (IEA 2012).
While CO2 capture technology can be developed at an
international level, the development of a CO2 transport and
storage infrastructure requires insights into specific regio-
nal and local circumstances. In the EU co-funded COMET
project (Boavida et al. 2011, 2013a), these insights were
generated for the region encompassing Morocco, Portugal,
and Spain, here designated as the west Mediterranean
region. These countries were responsible for emissions
from stationary sources of 170 Mt CO2-equivalent in 2009,
and due to its peripheral location, this region will have
difficulties in connecting to other CCS infrastructures in
Europe or Africa. The motivations for considering an
integrated infrastructure for this region are related not only
to the geographical proximity but also to the increasing
connections between the energy and industrial sectors in
the region, to the continuity of sedimentary basins and to
the existing experience in managing a large-scale gas
transport infrastructure.
The overall strategy of COMET considered three stages:
(1) harmonized inventory and mapping of CO2 sources and
storage capacities in the region; (2) modelling of national
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and regional energy systems; (3) definition and assessment
of least cost transport networks in the study area.
Stages 2 and 3 involved the use of an energy system
model (TIMES-COMET) to estimate the volume of CO2
likely to be captured at source clusters from 2020 to 2050
(Kanudia et al. 2013). The geographic definition of the
transport and storage infrastructure depends on identifying
the storage clusters able to accommodate that amount of
CO2 at the lowest transport and storage cost. Transport
costs are addressed by a linear cost model implemented in a
GIS tool, detailed in van den Broek et al. (2013). The
storage costs are strongly dependent on site-specific factors
and some of these factors, such as the injection rate and
number of injection wells, are difficult to define in the
initial stages of planning. These factors are critical for safe
storage, because assuming high injection rates to minimize
costs can result in excessive pressure build-ups, increasing
the risk of fracturing the reservoir or containment
formations.
This article presents the methodology and results of
storage cost estimation, which implied quantifying the
injection rate and number of injection wells. Ultimately the
objective was to maximize the total injection rate without
inducing pressure increases that could jeopardise the
integrity of the storage complex. The components of the
storage costs and a brief overview of the existing analytical
solutions for computing the injection rate are first intro-
duced. The methodology, relying on the use of some of
those analytical solutions and on assumptions related to the
admissible pressure build-up and well interference, is then
described. Finally, the results for the study region are
presented and their influences on the overall design of the
storage infrastructure in the target countries are discussed.
Background
Storage capacity in the study region
The identification and assessment of cost-effective CO2
storage opportunities were required in COMET to delineate
a suitable CO2 transport and storage infrastructure for its
specific study region.
Spain had already conducted a regional storage capacity
assessment within the scope of the EU GeoCapacity Pro-
ject (Vangkilde-Pedersen et al. 2009a, b), but previous
work regarding CO2 geological storage in Portugal (Car-
neiro et al. 2011; Machado et al. 2007) and Morocco
(Carneiro et al. 2008) had been done only at very pre-
liminary stages. In the COMET project deep saline aquifers
in Portugal and deep saline aquifers and depleted oil and
gas fields in Morocco have been identified and their storage
capacity assessed at the regional scale. The approach in
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Spain was conducted at a local scale, focusing in the areas
and reservoirs previously identified in the EU GeoCapac-
ity, and aiming to define the most suitable structures and
traps (Martinez et al. 2013).
The effective storage capacity in the three countries
amounts to nearly 30 GtCO2, with Spain holding around 22
GtCO2, while estimates for Portugal indicate 7.5 GtCO2
and onshore storage in Morocco amounts only to 0.4
GtCO2 (Boavida et al. 2013b). Structures with a capacity
lower than 3 Mt were discarded and the Morocco offshore
storage capacity was not assessed. The storage capacity is
distributed through several sedimentary basins, with more
than 95 % being located in deep saline aquifers in onshore
settings (Fig. 1a). As expected, given the size of the sedi-
mentary basins and the results of the regional-scale
assessment conducted in EU GeoCapacity Project, the
number of potential structures identified in Spain is large,
totalling 118. A much lower number of potential injection
sites were identified for the other countries, 36 sites in
Portugal and only 9 sites in Morocco (Fig. 1b). In total, the
effective storage capacity assessed in the 163 potential sites
is enough to store almost 200 years of the current CO2
emissions from stationary sources in the three countries.
The 163 potential injection sites were combined in 43
storage clusters, identified in Fig. 1a by the designation S#,
according to three criteria:
1. Continuity of geological basin/structure—if contigu-
ous storage sites are part of the same sedimentary basin
they may be considered in the same cluster;
2. Distance between centres of sites—several clusters
may still result in the same basin if the centroids of the
polygons defining the sites (regarded as the potential
injection well location) are very distant from each
other. No constant distance was imposed and instead a
decision was made on a case-by-case analysis;
3. Onshore/offshore setting—clusters cannot include sites
on different onshore/offshore settings, even if there is
geological continuity between them due to the very
different costs expected for onshore and offshore
storage.
Storage cost components
CO2 storage costs depend strongly on the type of reservoir
(saline aquifers, hydrocarbon fields, etc.), setting (onshore,
offshore), surface area that needs to be characterized and
monitored during operation, or the previous existence of
wells and/or facilities. As any economic analysis of an
industrial operation, storage cost estimation includes
investments needed, capital costs and operational costs,
including monitoring and verification. In COMET the
development costs (previous exploration and
 Author's personal copy
Environ Earth Sci
(a)
Fig. 1 Location of potential storage areas (a) and their estimated capacities in the west Mediterranean region (b)
implementation of facilities) were considered an invest-
ment dependent on the volume of the potential storage
complex and its injection rate.
The investment costs for each site were estimated
according to van den Broek et al. (2010):
I ¼ W ðCd H þ Cw Þ þ Csf þ Csd ð1Þ
where I = investment costs (€); W = number of wells per
site. The number of wells depends on the storage potential and
the injection rate per well for the site; Cd = drilling costs (€
per metre, Cd = 0 if old wells can be re-used); H = drilling
depth, being the depth of the reservoir starting at the bottom of
the sea (for offshore sites) or the ground surface (for onshore
sites) plus the thickness of the reservoir (in metre); Cw = fixed
costs per well (in €). In case of re-use of existing wells, these
are the costs for the workovers of those wells (i.e. to make the
well suitable for CO2 storage); Csf = investment costs for the
surface facilities on the injection site and investments for
monitoring (e.g. purchase and emplacement of permanent
monitoring equipment) (in €); Csd = investment costs for the
site development costs, e.g. site investigation costs, costs for
(b)
Number of sites
36
Morocco
118 Portugal
Spain
Storage capacity (Mt CO2)
417
7469
21776
preparation of the drilling site and costs for environmental
impact assessment study. It also includes monitoring invest-
ment costs before the injection phase. In general, it is expected
that for depleted gas and oil fields geological and geophysical
data are available (in €).
Although not specifically included in Eq. (1), the vol-
ume of CO2 per unit time that can be injected at each site
without affecting safety conditions, i.e., the injection rate,
is an essential component of the storage costs since it
constrains the number of injection wells that can be con-
sidered in each structure.
Overview of injection rate calculation methods
The importance of the injection rate to the viability of CO2
storage was stressed by Ehlig-Economides and Econo-
mides (2010), in which the authors advocate that low
compressibility of fluids and rocks does not allow for large-
scale storage of CO2. A reply by Cavanagh et al. (2010)
stresses the importance of clearly distinguishing between
closed and open reservoirs and that evidence from the
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existing large-scale storage sites (e.g. Sleipner, In Salah,
Weyburn, etc.) demonstrates that high injection rates can
be obtained, although the issue of pressure build-up should
be considered carefully. Numerical analysis for determin-
ing the storage capacity of the Utsira Formation (Bergmo
et al. 2011; Lindeberg et al. 2009), a large size aquifer with
excellent permeability, indicates that pressure build-up
control requires a large number of injection and production
wells. This issue is particularly relevant for onshore stor-
age, where production wells may be less acceptable due to
the difficulties for discarding the high salinity water in an
environmentally sound and cost-effective manner.
For closed aquifers, the pressure build-up will be
accommodated mostly by the rock and fluid (brine and
CO2), which have low compressibility. For that reason,
analytical solutions for estimating the CO2 storage capacity
in closed systems usually assume very low storage effi-
ciencies, mostly ranging from 1 to 4 % of the available
pore space (Bradshaw et al. 2007; CO2CRC 2008; Good-
man et al. 2011; Vangkilde-Pedersen et al. 2009a). How-
ever, at the regional scale pressure gradients and flow of
water across the cap-rock cannot be ignored (Cavanagh
et al. 2010; Zhou et al. 2008). For open aquifers, even
though the brine can migrate outside of the target structure,
effectively increasing the pore space available for the
injected CO2, pressure build-up is still a constraining fac-
tor, since it remains necessary to ensure that the pressure at
the injection well will stay below the cap-rock capillary
entry pressure and the values likely to induce fracture of
the reservoir and cap-rock.
The pressure build-up is dependent on many reservoir-
specific parameters, including permeability, porosity, for-
mation thickness, areal extent, pressure, temperature, rock
and fluid compressibility, and brine salinity. At the site
characterization stage, complex numerical models that
require a great deal of input data are implemented to cope
with the non-linearity between pressure and injection rate,
the two-phase behaviour and relative permeability effects.
At the early stages of site selection, simpler analytical and
semi-analytical solutions are more amenable to be used for
describing pressure build-up and estimate the injection rate,
and have been presented by several authors (e.g. Dentz and
Tartakovsky 2009; Mathias et al. 2009a, b; Mathias and
Roberts 2013; Nordbotten et al. 2005; Saripalli and McGrail
2002; Vilarrasa et al. 2010a, b). Inevitably, all these solutions
consider simplifying assumptions, for instance both Saripalli
and McGrail (2002) and Nordbotten et al. (2005) assume that
fluids and formation are incompressible and that pressure is
averaged across the aquifer thickness, a common feature also
to Dentz and Tartakovsky (2009) or Mathias et al. (2009a).
Neglecting compressibility imposes the need to assume an
arbitrary radius of influence. Zhou et al. (2008) do consider
rock compressibility, but pressure build-up is spatially
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uniform and independent of permeability. Mathias et al.
(2009a) consider slight fluid and formation compressibility
and do not require an arbitrary radius of influence, but it still
assumes an abrupt interface and constant fluid viscosity.
Vilarrasa et al. (2010a) suggest calculating the radius of
influence using Cooper and Jacobs (1946) solution and
propose a method to account for CO2 compressibility effects
and viscosity variations and apply it to the analytical solu-
tions of Dentz and Tartakovsky (2009). Recently Azizi et al.
(2013) provided a set of type curves, based on numerous
numerical simulations, to estimate the injection rate of wells
based on the permeability, surface area, depth and thickness
of the reservoir.
A detailed analysis of the differences and merits of each
of these solutions is beyond the scope of this article and the
reader is referred to the original papers.
Methodology
For each potential CO2 injection site, investment costs were
estimated according to Eq. 1. Costs were differentiated for
storing CO2 in onshore fields or offshore fields, and for oil
and gas fields or aquifers. Given that in the study area depths
to seabed can reach hundreds to thousands of metres at rel-
atively short distances from the coast, screening was, in
general, restricted to the shallow continental shelf (water
column\200 m), except in the Alboran sea and the offshore
south from Portugal, where sites with water column up to
600 m were screened. The cost components distinguish
between storage with water column lower than 60 m, from
60 to 100 m and above 100 m.
In some circumstances, for large injection sites, many
injection wells may be admissible and multiple surface
facilities will be required. In this study, it was assumed that
a surface facility should be considered for each 10 vertical
injection wells. The operating, maintenance, and monitor-
ing (OMM) costs were always based on a fixed percentage
(5 %) of the investment costs for development of the
storage site from scratch.
Table 1 lists the value assigned to each CO2 storage cost
component in Eq. 1, with the exception of the number of
wells, which depends on the injection rate per well and the
annual injection rate for each site. A spreadsheet tool was
implemented to calculate the injection rate and number of
wells for each site resorting to some of the analytical
solutions previously mentioned and taking into account
parameters such as depth, permeability, radius of influence
of wells, interference between wells, pressure build-up,
rock and fluids compressibility and CO2 density under
storage conditions (Table 2).
The analytical solutions implemented were those of
Dentz and Tartakovsky (2009), Mathias et al. (2009a),
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Table 1 Storage cost components (all values in €2007)

Cost component Onshore aquifer Offshore aquifera Offshore aquifer Offshore aquifer
(WD \60 m) (60 m \ WD \ 100 m) (100 m \ WD \ 1,000 m)

Site development costs (Csd) 24,480 k€ 24,097 k€ 24,097 k€ 24,097 k€

Drilling costs per metre (Cd) 4 k€ 10 k€ 18 k€ 26 k€
Well fixed costs (Cw) –b 8,200 k€ 8,200 k€ 8,200 k€
Surface facilitiesc (Csf) 1,530 k€ 61,200 k€ 61,200 k€ 61,200 k€
Monitoring investments 1,530 k€ 1,530 k€ 1,530 k€ 1,530 k€
OMMd 5% 5% 5% 5%
a
WD—depth to seabed
b
For onshore wells, the fixed costs per well are included in the drilling costs (assumed reservoir depths of around 3,000 m)
c
One surface facility per each 10 injection wells
d
Operating, maintenance and monitoring (OMM) costs are given as a percentage of investment costs

Table 2 Parameters and Parameters Source of data and range of valuesa

sources of data used in the
analytical solutions
a
Where no range of values is
indicated, calculations are made
internally in the spreadsheet
Reservoir properties
Intrinsic permeability (k) COMET database (2.5–1,300 mD)
Porosity (/) COMET database (0.03–0.43)
Pore volume (Vt) COMET database
Reservoir thickness (H) COMET database (11–1,235 m)
Reservoir pressure (P0) COMET database (4.41–42 MPa)
Reservoir temperature (T0) COMET database (27–97 °C)
Reservoir area (A) COMET database (0.35–3,075 km2)
Rock compressibility (a) Yale et al. (1993) solution (2.83 9 10-10–2.06 9 10-9/Pa)
Brine properties
Brine salinity (XS) COMET database (10–269 g/l)
Brine compressibility (b) TOUGH2-ECO2N subroutines
Brine viscosity (lw)
Brine density (qw)
Specific storage (Ss) gqw ða þ /bÞ
CO2 properties
CO2 viscosity (lc) TOUGH2-ECO2N subroutines
CO2 density (qc)
Other parameters
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Radius of influence (R0) 2:25tkqw g=Ss lw
Well radius (rw) 0.15 m
Time (t) 30 years
Limit to pressure increase (DP) 0.2P0
Well efficiency 80 %
Limit to interference between wells \0.25DP

Nordbotten et al. (2005), Vilarrasa et al. (2010b). These
solutions were selected because, while being mathemati-
cally robust, they can be easily implemented in spread-
sheets, an important requirement when modelling 163
potential injection sites, and are compatible with the level
of information gathered for the sites. Other analytical
solutions have been published since the completion of the
COMET project (Azizi and Cinar 2013; Azizi et al. 2013;
Mathias et al. 2011a, b, 2013; Mathias and Roberts 2013),
and although no systematic comparison was made for the
163 sites, tests were conducted using some of those new
solutions and no major differences were found in the

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results that could invalidate the conclusions of the COMET
project.
The constraint imposed to define the injection rate at
each storage site was a maximum pressure build-up of
20 % of the initial reservoir pressure. This is possibly much
below the reservoir and cap-rock fracture pressure, but was
deemed adequate in light of uncertainty on the existing
data. All CO2 and brine properties, such as density, vis-
cosity and compressibility, were computed taking into
account the pressure and temperature dependence and
resorting to the subroutines in TOUGH2 (Pruess et al.
1999) and ECO2N (Pruess 2005; Pruess and Spycher 2007)
which were available to the spreadsheet via a Fortran DLL.
All four selected analytical solutions were applied to the
163 injection sites, and the injection rate and well numbers
adopted for each site were averaged over the results of the
four solutions (which in fact retrieved very similar results,
with the main deviations being found in the Nordbotten
et al. (2005) solution, usually resulting in higher injection
rates, although normally less than 10 % above the average
of the other solutions).
A common assumption of the four solutions is that the
reservoir is unbounded, i.e., it is infinite in length. How-
ever, out of the 163 injection sites, 96 were considered as
closed or semi-closed structures, due to the faulted nature
of the reservoirs and complex tectonic history of some of
the sedimentary basins occurring in the study region.
Closed structures imply larger pressure build-ups and lower
injection rates.
The level of detail and data gathered for the structures
identified in Spain was sufficient to identify the structures
as open, semi-closed or closed. However, for Portugal and
Morocco, there was considerable doubt about the hydraulic
behaviour of the sites due to the scarcity of hydraulic tests.
Because all sites in Portugal were geometrically defined
using as boundaries large faults that cross the reservoirs
(and thus some sites are contiguous), it was assumed that
those sites would be modelled as closed structures. The
same approach was applied for the structures in clusters
S08 (Essaouira basin) and S28 (Doukkala basin) in
Morocco.
This approach of assuming closed-reservoirs when fully
delimited by faults is conservative (fully closed structures
will result in lower injection rates and higher storage costs)
since it is likely that pressure dissipation can occur along
some of the faults. This cautionary approach was consid-
ered adequate due to the uncertainty associated to the data
gathered for Portugal and Morocco. The approach is less
conservative for Spain, where confidence about the open/
closed hydraulic behaviour of the structures is higher.
The consequence of assuming the reservoir has a closed
volume is that the average reservoir pressure will increase
over time, which according to Ehlig-Economides and
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Economides (2010) translates into an average pressure
increase given by Vc =ðVt ct Þ where Vc is injected volume of
CO2 over time, Vt is the pore volume and ct is the total
compressibility of the system (rock, water and CO2). To
simulate the effect of pressure build-up on a closed struc-
ture that average pressure increase was added to the pres-
sure build-up simulated by the aforementioned analytical
solutions.
The radius of influence of each well was used to esti-
mate the number of wells admissible in each structure,
considering assumptions of pressure interference varying
from 0 to 25 % of the injection well pressure, and the area
of the structure. The radius of influence of each well was
estimated using the Cooper and Jacobs (1946) solution for
evaluating transient groundwater pumping tests and well
field history, except for Mathias et al. (2009a) which does
not require the calculation of a radius of influence. The
number of injection wells was calculated as the integer
ratio between the area of the reservoir and the radius of
influence (or the radial distance corresponding to the
admissible pressure interference).
The injection phase was set to 30 years and well effi-
ciency was set to a constant 80 %. Rock compressibility
was found to be a key parameter for which no estimates
existed for any of the potential storage sites and to be very
scarce in the literature for the depths required for CO2
storage. Rock compressibilities were computed following
Yale et al. (1993) solution, taking into account the rock
types and reservoir depth and pressure, and given by:
(
Cf ¼ Aðr  BÞC þD
ð2Þ
r ¼ K1 rv  K2 pi þ K3 ðpi  pÞ
where Cf is formation compressibility, pi is initial reservoir
pressure, p is pressure (in psi) following production and rv
is overburden stress. Constants A, B, C and K1 to K3 are
given in Table 3.
Since most of the storage sites are onshore, brine pro-
duction wells were not considered an option to control
pressure build-up. A final assumption was made that no
single well could have an injection rate above 1 MtCO2/a.
Results
The total injection rate for the 163 potential storage sites
is estimated at 558 MtCO2/a, with an average injection
rate of 3.4 MtCO2/a/site. However, 11 % of the sites
cannot sustain injection rates above 0.1 MtCO2/a, and
33 % of sites do not allow injection rates above 0.5
MtCO2/a (Fig. 2a).
The number of wells per storage site is on average of
four wells, with a distribution skewed to the lower number
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Environ Earth Sci

Table 3 Constants for compressibility calculation (from Yale et al. 1993)

Rock type Constants for stress conditions Constants for compressibility calculation
K1 K2 A B C D

Consolidated sandstones 0.85 0.8 -2.40E-05 300 0.0623 4.31E-05

Low-porosity consolidated sandstones 0.85 0.6 -2.40E-05 300 0.0623 4.31E-05
Friable sandstones 0.9 0.9 1.05E-04 500 -0.225 -1.10E-05
Unconsolidated sands 0.95 0.95 -2.81E-05 300 0.1395 1.18E-04
Carbonates 0.85 0.85 -2.40E-05 300 0.0623 4.31E-05

(a) 30 (a) 20%

Offshore (46 sites)
25
Onshore (117 sites)
15%
20
Frequency

Frequency
15
10%
10

5 5%

0
0.1 0.4 0.7 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28
0%
Total injecon rate per site (MtCO2/a)

420
20

60

100

140

180

220

260

300

340

380

460

500
(b) 100 Investment costs (€/tCO2/a)

80 (b) 30%

60 25%
Frequency

Offshore (46 sites)

20%
Frequency

40 Onshore (117 sites)

15%
20
10%
0
1 3 6 10 14 18 22 26 30 34 38 42 46
5%
Number of wells per site
0%
Fig. 2 Injection rate (a) and number of wells per potential injection
site (b)
Total storage costs (€/(tCO2)

of wells (Fig. 2b). In about half of the injection sites, a
single well is admissible, reflecting the large radius of
influence for each well for the 30-year injection period.
Most of the selected sites are relatively small in area (the
mean radius of an equivalent circle is approximately
4 km), particularly in the case of Spain, where site selec-
tion was made at the structure scale (e.g. anticlines, fault
traps, etc.), and pressure build-up affects the entire
structure.
The low number of injection wells for most storage sites
also reflects the option to maximize the injection rate in
each well. It is possible to obtain higher total injection rates
by allowing for pressure interference between wells, each
with lower injection rates. This was studied for the storage
sites with an area larger than 100 km2, allowing for pres-
sure interferences up to 25 % of the maximum induced
Fig. 3 a Investments costs per annual injection rate; b total storage
costs per ton of CO2, including investment and OMM costs, for a
30-year injection scenario at the maximum admissible injection rate
and assuming a 7 % discount rate. All costs in € 2007
pressure build-up, which resulted in an increased number
of wells in those sites. However, the increase in total
injection rate is less significant due to the reduction in the
injection rate in each well to account for pressure
interference.
Investment costs per annual injection rate vary as
shown in Fig. 3a for each site and aggregated in Table 4
for each cluster. The minimum onshore investment cost
is 9.3 €/tCO2/a, with 46 % of sites costing less than 60
€/tCO2/a, but exceeding 500 €/tCO2/a in 10 % of the
potential sites, which are economically unfeasible. These

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Table 4 Total injection rate and investment costs (in €2007) per storage cluster
Cluster Cluster name Country Storage Injection rate Investment Total storage costsb
capacity MtCO2 MtCO2/a costs €/tCO2/a (investment and
OMM) €/tCO2

S01 Porto Basin 1 Portugal 1,205 17.1 100.4 13.1

S02 Porto Basin 2 Portugal 800 3.8 180.4 23.6
S03 North Lusitanian 1 Portugal 2,211 11.8 92.4 12.1
S04 North Lusitanian 2 Portugal 1,591 11.4 173.0 22.6
S05 Lusitanian Onshore Portugal 330 10.7 36.2 4.7
S06 South Lusitanian Portugal 85 1.7 349.0 45.6
S07 Algarve 2 Spain/Portugal 557 36.7 242.1 31.6
S08 Essaouira Morocco 266 7.2 73.3 9.6
S09 Almazán Spain 127 11.8 112.4 14.7
S10 San Vicente de la B. Spain 47 1.0 254.2 33.2
S11 Graus Spain 41 22.0 115.2 15.0
S12 Jaca Spain 359 1.3 235.7 30.8
S13 Alcañiz Spain 2,040 75.8 49.1 6.4
S14 Zaragoza Spain 156 2.3 92.1 12.0
S15 Logroño Spain 4,161 35.7 22.7 3.0
S16 Reinosa Spain 54 1.7 47.6 6.2
S17 Burgos Spain 1,298 9.6 70.5 9.2
S18 León Spain 471 2.8 46.1 6.0
S19 Aranda de Duero Spain 568 24.9 47.0 6.1
S20 Madrid Spain 2,215 2.9 54.2 7.1
S21 Tarancón Spain 1,210 11.2 58.5 7.6
S22 Cuenca Spain 1,035 65.9 27.4 3.6
S23 Almansa Spain 959 23.7 18.3 2.4
S24 Albacete Spain 134 0.6 318.1 41.5
S25 Úbeda Spain 1,082 41.0 11.0 1.4
S26 Baena Spain 38 3.9 86.5 11.3
S27 Valladolid Spain 4,312 4.4 70.3 9.2
S28 Safi Morocco 147 0.4 416.8 54.4
S29 Huelva Spain 217 0.1 275.9 36.0
S30 Estepona Spain 12 0.6 77.8 10.2
S31 Moratalla Spain 413 24.3 10.4 1.4
S32 Bermeo Spain 30 0.5a 252.7 33.0
S33 Gijón Spain 64 0.5a 301.8 39.4
S34 Ribadeo Spain 23 0.5a 230.5 30.1
S35 Vigo Spain 131 0.5a 240.9 31.5
S36 Alborán Morocco 218 2.0 263.1 34.4
S37 San Pedro del Pinatar Spain 63 0.5a 228.2 29.8
S38 Calpe Spain 5 0.5a 890.9 116.3
S39 Valencia Spain 6 0.5a 548.7 71.7
S40 Castellón de la Plana Spain 36 0.5a 246.6 32.2
S41 Barcelona Spain 93 0.5a 237.0 31.0
S42 Algarve 1 Portugal 845 13.0 98.6 12.9
S43 Gharb Morocco 4 0.4 243.6 31.8
a
Assumed, since there was not enough information to estimate the injection rate
b
For a 30-year injection period and considering annual OMM costs equal to 5 % of investment costs and a 7 % discount rate

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Fig. 4 CO2 storage over time in the study area until 2050 for the conservative CCS ccenario (40 % emissions reduction target until 2050,
optimistic economic growth and no cross-frontier transport allowed)

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Table 5 Storage clusters and mass of CO2 stored in the COMET Conservative CCS scenario (after Boavida et al. 2013b)
Cluster Country Injection limits Simulated injection Percentage share
cumulative/total
Annual Cumulative Max. annual Cumulative
(MtCO2/a) (MtCO2) (MtCO2/a) (MtCO2)

S13 Spain 75.8 2,040 46.1 930 27.6

S25 Spain 25.5 1,082 25.5a 780 50.7
S19 Spain 10.3 568 10.3a 339 60.7
S15 Spain 35.7 4,161 13.4 284 69.1
S31 Spain 7.3 413 7.3a 274 77.2
a
S05 Portugal 10.7 330 10.7 247 84.6
S22 Spain 16.5 1,035 13.7 224 91.2
S08 Morocco 2.9 266 2.9a 94 94.0
S23 Spain 15.5 959 4.7 90 96.7
S03 Portugal 11.8 2,211 4.6 59 98.5
S16 Spain 1.7 54 1.7a 31 99.4
S42 Portugal 13.0 845 0.73 9.5 99.7
S36 Spain 0.5 218 0.50a 6.5 99.9
S43 Morocco 0.4 3.8 0.30 3.8b 99.98
S01 Portugal 17.1 1,205 0.05 0.7 100.0
Total cumulative stored = 3,375 MtCO2 in 40 years
a
The maximum annual injection rate is hit
b
The cumulative capacity has been reached

high costs reflect the considerable depth of some of sites,
and are also a function of the conservative values
adopted for the hydraulic and petrophysic parameters of
some sites.
Offshore investment costs show a minimum of 61.1 €/
tCO2/a, not surprisingly much higher than the onshore
costs, and with 50 % of the offshore sites costing up to 240
€/tCO2/a. Again, more than 10 % of the offshore sites have
investment costs above 500 €/tCO2/a. Given the existing
onshore storage capacity, it is likely that offshore storage
will be only marginally required.
Taking into account all investment costs and OMM
components, assuming a 30-year continuous injection
period at the maximum rate per well and applying a 7 %
discount rate, the onshore storage costs would range from
1.2 €/tCO2 for the most favourable onshore clusters to
values above 100 €/tCO2 for 3 % of the onshore sites, but
with more than 50 % costing less than 10 €/tCO2 (Fig. 3a
for each storage site and aggregated per cluster in Table 4).
Offshore storage costs are much higher, with a minimum of
8 €/tCO2 and only 7 % of the sites costing less than 10 €/
tCO2. 40 % of the storage sites cost up to 30 €/tCO2.
The optimization conducted to minimize transport and
storage costs, using the TIMES-COMET model, and the
resulting CO2 transport network were highly influenced by
these injection rates and storage costs, since the source–
sink match focused not only on the available storage
capacity, but also on the injection rates. Details about the
methodology for defining the transport and storage infra-
structure can be found elsewhere (Kanudia et al. 2013; van
den Broek et al. 2013; Boavida et al. 2013b), but Fig. 4 and
Table 5 illustrate the storage locations and amount to be
stored at each cluster for the COMET central scenario,
which considers a 40 % reduction of CO2 emissions in
2050 with respect to 2005, an optimistic economic growth
and impose that transport routes should follow existing
natural gas pipeline connections and that no cross-bound-
ary transport is possible.
In this scenario only 14 clusters out of the total 43
clusters are selected for storage, with the injection rate and
costs being the dominant factors on the selection of those
clusters, together with the constraints imposed to transport
routes. The cumulative amount stored in 40 years is 14 %
of the permanent storage capacity in the study area and the
maximum annual flow rate would not exceed 50 % of the
annual injection capacity. Seven sink clusters use the
maximum sustainable injection rate (Table 5).
The most relevant clusters are located in Spain, namely
the clusters of Logroño (S15), Úbeda (S25), Alcañiz (S13),
Cuenca (S22), Almansa (S23), Moratalla (S31), and
Aranda de Duero (S19), in decreasing order of importance
(Fig. 4). The sink cluster in Úbeda (S25) is very compet-
itive, but is limited by both annual and cumulative
capacity.
In Portugal the Lusitanian Onshore cluster (S05) is the
most relevant site, with the costs being considerably lower

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than the alternative offshore clusters. Storage at S05 is
limited by the annual capacity, and for large cumulative
volumes Portugal could store CO2 in Spain (if cross-
boundary transport is possible) or in the offshore cluster
S03.
In Morocco, the main storage site is the cluster centred
in the Essaouira Basin (S08), which has vast capacity,
while the Gharb basin cluster (S43) is limited by the very
small capacity, and ultimately CO2 captured at facilities in
the north of Morocco can be stored cost-effectively in the
south of Spain. However, the result for Morocco could be
considerable different once offshore storage capacity is
assessed.
These results are regarded as conservative (and integrate
the CONSERVATIVE CCS scenario, one of the six sce-
narios modelled in COMET) partly because of the cautious
approach to the injection capacity. The injection rates and
number of wells estimated for the storage clusters in Por-
tugal and clusters S08 and S28 in Morocco are regarded as
very conservative due to the assumption that they behave
as closed-structures. For instance, simulating the potential
storage sites in Portugal as open-structures would result in
an increase in total injection rate from 106 MtCO2/a to 177
MtCO2/a. This would translate in lower storage costs and,
possibly, selection of different or additional storage clus-
ters in the COMET energy system modelling. Other sce-
narios considered in COMET included an OPTIMISTIC
scenario with higher injection rates, and its results are
published in the project final report (Boavida et al. 2013b).
Conclusion
Identification of nearly 30 GtCO2 storage capacity in
Morocco, Portugal and Spain demonstrates that, together,
these countries have enough capacity to store almost
200 years of their present CO2 emissions. Thus, the main
constraints for definition of the CCS infrastructure are the
annual injection rate and the storage costs. Resorting to
several analytical solutions, the total injection capacity in
the 163 potential injection sites was estimated at about 558
MtCO2/a, which is far above the annual injection rate
needs. However, about 11 % of the injection sites do not
allow for injection rates above 0.1 Mt/a, requiring a large
number of wells, and being uneconomic. Nevertheless,
around 50 % of the injection sites show storage costs below
10 €/tCO2 and are likely to be the primary targets for CO2
storage. In fact, the simulations indicated that from the 43
storage clusters defined in the study region, only the most
cost-effective 11–15 clusters, depending on the scenario,
are likely to be required for CO2 storage and should be the
focus of future research.
Uncertainty in the parameters characterizing the reser-
voirs is high, and in some cases hydraulic and petrophys-
ical parameters were inferred from shallow depth
information. The analysis conducted indicates the rele-
vance of those parameters for planning a CCS infrastruc-
ture in the study area. Future research in Portugal, Morocco
and Spain should focus on decreasing uncertainty about
permeability of the reservoirs, compressibility of rocks of
the storage complexes and on criteria for establishing the
injection rate per well and the sustainable injection
pressure.
Research and exploration efforts should be primarily
directed to those clusters indicated by the COMET sce-
narios as most cost-effective and listed in Table 5, and to
those sites with very high storage capacity but for which
low injection rates were estimated. Increasing the reli-
ability of the geological data would result in less uncer-
tainty in the estimated injection rate and number of wells,
and in more reliable storage cost estimates.
Acknowledgments This research has been carried out in the context
of the EU funded COMET project, contract no. 241400. We are
grateful to all project partners that have supported the work for
identification of storage sites. Authors would like to thank all the
institutions that have supplied data for the consecution of these and
future results. Special acknowledgments go to all contributors to the
work done in COMET WP3: Yves-Michel LeNindre, Ruxandra Nita,
Alexander Brugeron, Mohammed Dakki, Abdallah Ait Salem,
António Correia, Fátima Cardoso, Carlos Ribeiro, Augusto Costa,
Carlos Rosa, Diogo Rosa, Elsa Ramalho, Helena Amaral, João
Carvalho, José Sampaio, Pedro Terrinha, Susana Machado, Tiago
Cunha, Maria Olho Azul and Pablo Gentil. DPEP (the Portuguese
Division for Oil Exploration and Production) is gratefully acknowl-
edged for providing access to technical reports and databases.
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