This report uses the CMIP5 series of climate model simulations to produce country- level uncertainty distributions for use in socioeconomic risk assessments of climate change impacts. It provides appropriate probability distributions, by month, for 169 countries and autonomous-areas on temperature, precipitation, maximum temperature, maximum wind speed, humidity, runoff, soil moisture and evaporation for the historical period (1976-2005), and for decadal time periods to 2100. It also provides historical and future distributions for the Arctic region on ice concentration, ice thickness, age of ice, and ice ridging in 15-degree longitude arc segments from the Arctic Circle to 80 degrees latitude, plus two polar semicircular regions from 80 to 90 degrees latitude. The uncertainty is meant to describe the lack of knowledge rather than imprecision in the physical simulation because the emphasis is on unfalsified risk and its use to determine potential socioeconomic impacts. The full report is contained in 27 volumes.
Natural gas storage facilities are a critical component of our energy supply and distribution chain, allowing elasticity in gas supply to accommodate daily to seasonal demand fluctuations. As has been made evident by the recent Aliso Canyon Gas Storage facility incident, a loss of well integrity may result in significant consequences, including the prolonged shutdown of an entire facility. The Aliso Canyon gas well blowout emitted approximately 100,000 tonnes of natural gas (mostly methane) over 4 months and displaced thousands of nearby residents from their homes. The high visibility of the event has led to increased scrutiny of the safety of natural gas storage at the Aliso Canyon facility, led to questions about energy reliability, and raised broader concerns for natural gas storage integrity throughout the country.
Muons are subatomic particles that can penetrate the earth’s crust several kilometers and may be useful for subsurface characterization. The absorption rate of muons depends on the density of the materials through which they pass. Muons are more sensitive to density variation than other phenomena, including gravity, making them beneficial for subsurface investigation. Measurements of muon flux rate at differing directions provide density variations of the materials between the muon source (cosmic rays and neutrino interactions) and the detector, much like a CAT scan. Currently, muon tomography can resolve features to the sub-meter scale.
The World Water and Agriculture Model has been used to simulate water, hydropower, and food sector effects in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia during the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reservoir. This unique capability allows tradeoffs to be made between filling policies for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reservoir. This Nile River Basin study is presented to illustrate the capacity to use the World Water and Agriculture Model to simulate regional food security issues while keeping a global perspective. The study uses runoff data from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 and information from the literature in order to establish a reasonable set of hydrological initial conditions. Gross Domestic Product and population growth are modelled exogenously based on a composite projection of United Nations and World Bank data. The effects of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam under various percentages of water withheld are presented.
The 2015-2016 Aliso Canyon/Porter Ranch natural gas well blowout emitted approximately 100,000 tonnes of natural gas (mostly methane, CH4) over four months. The blowout impacted thousands of nearby residents, who were displaced from their homes. The high visibility of the event has led to increased scrutiny of the safety of natural gas storage at the Aliso Canyon facility, as well as broader concern for natural gas storage integrity throughout the country. This report presents the findings of the DOE National Laboratories Well Integrity Work Group efforts in the four tasks. In addition to documenting the work of the Work Group, this report presents high priority recommendations to improve well integrity and reduce the likelihood and consequences of subsurface natural gas leaks.
SANSMIC is solution mining software that was developed by SNL and is utilized in in Sandia’s role as geotechnical advisor to the US DOE SPR for salt cavern development and maintenance. Four SANSMIC leach modes – withdrawal, direct, reverse and leach-fill – can be modeled. This report updates and expands the original 1983 documentation. It provides execution instructions, input data descriptions, input file format, output file descriptions and an example problem.
This report analyzes data from multi-arm caliper (MAC) surveys taken at the Big Hill SPR site to determine the most likely casing weights within each well. Radial arm data from MAC surveys were used to calculate the approximate wall thickness of each well. Results from this study indicate that (1) most wells at the site have thinner wall thicknesses than expected, (2) most wells experienced an acute increase in diameter near the salt/caprock interface, and (3) there were isolated instances of well sections being the wrong casing weight. All three findings could have a negative impact on well integrity.
In the past two years three SPR caverns, BH103, BH107 and BH112, have been placed under long term nitrogen monitoring following anomalous pressure behavior. This report focuses on the behavior of these caverns while under nitrogen, utilizing the Sandia hydrostatic column model to define the theoretical behavior under tight (no leak) conditions. All six wells exhibited reproducible pressure cycles with a creep-driven nitrogen pressurization rate relative to brine of 0.7, a value consistent with the model prediction for no-leak behavior. No current evidence of a leak in any of the wells was found. The wells do show evidence of notable deformation at the caprock/salt interface that is increasing with time. Additionally, geomechanical simulations predict that the wells are at high risk of casing failure by year ~2024 due to deformation induced by accumulated creep and subsidence effects.
This report summarizes the work performed in the prioritization of cavern access wells for remediation and monitoring at the Bayou Choctaw Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. The grading included consideration of all 15 wells at the Bayou Choctaw site, with each active well receiving a separate grade for remediation and monitoring. Numerous factors affecting well integrity were incorporated into the grading including casing survey results, cavern pressure history, results from geomechanical simulations, and site geologic factors. The factors and grading framework used here are the same as those used in developing similar well remediation and monitoring priorities at the Big Hill, Bryan Mound, and West Hackberry Strategic Petroleum Reserve Sites.
The three-dimensional finite element mesh capturing realistic geometries of Bayou Choctaw site has been constructed using the sonar and seismic survey data obtained from the field. The mesh is consisting of hexahedral elements because the salt constitutive model is coded using hexahedral elements. Various ideas and techniques to construct finite element mesh capturing artificially and naturally formed geometries are provided. The techniques to reduce the number of elements as much as possible to save on computer run time with maintaining the computational accuracy is also introduced. The steps and methodologies could be applied to construct the meshes of Big Hill, Bryan Mound, and West Hackberry strategic petroleum reserve sites. The methodology could be applied to the complicated shape masses for not only various civil and geological structures but also biological applications such as artificial limbs.
This report summarizes the work performed in the prioritization of cavern access wells for remediation and monitoring at the West Hackberry Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. The grading included consideration of all 31 wells at the West Hackberry site, with each well receiving a separate grade for remediation and monitoring. Numerous factors affecting well integrity were incorporated into the grading including casing survey results, cavern pressure history, results from geomechanical simulations, and site geologic factors. The factors and grading framework used here are the same as those used in developing similar well remediation and monitoring priorities at the Big Hill and Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve Sites.
This report summarizes the work performed in the prioritization of cavern access wells for remediation and monitoring at the Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. The grading included consideration of all 47 wells at the Bryan Mound site, with each well receiving a separate grade for remediation and monitoring. Numerous factors affecting well integrity were incorporated into the grading including casing survey results, cavern pressure history, results from geomechanical simulations, and site geologic factors. The factors and grading framework used here are the same as those used in developing similar well remediation and monitoring priorities at the Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve Site.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has an increasing reliance on multi-arm caliper surveys to assess the integrity of casing for cavern access wells and to determine priorities for casing remediation. Multi-arm caliper (MAC) surveys provide a view of well casing deformation by reporting radial measurements of the inner casing wall as the tool is drawn through the casing. Over the last several years the SPR has collected a large number of modern MAC surveys. In total, these surveys account for over 100 million individual measurements. The surveys were collected using differing survey vendors and survey hardware. This has resulted in a collection of disparate data sets which confound attempts to make well-to-well or time-dependent evaluations. In addition, the vendor supplied MAC interpretations often involve variables which are not well defined or which may not be applicable to casings for cavern access wells. These factors reduce the usability of these detailed data sets. In order to address this issue and provide an independent analysis of multi-arm caliper survey data, Sandia National Labs has developed processing techniques and analysis variables which allow for the comparison of MAC survey data regardless of the source of the survey data. These techniques use the raw radial arm information and newly developed analysis variables to assess the casing status and provide a means for well-to-well and time-dependent analyses. Well-to-well and time-dependent investigation of the MAC survey data provide s information to prioritize well remediation activities and identify wells with integrity issues. This paper presents the challenges in using disparate MAC survey data, techniques developed to address these challenges and some of the insights gained from these new techniques.
This report summarizes the work performed in developing a framework for the prioritization of cavern access wells for remediation and monitoring at the Big Hill Strategic Petroleum Reserve site. This framework was then applied to all 28 wells at the Big Hill site with each well receiving a grade for remediation and monitoring. Numerous factors affecting well integrity were incorporated into the grading framework including casing survey results, cavern pressure history, results from geomechanical simulations, and site geologic factors. The framework was developed in a way as to be applicable to all four of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites.