On Saturday, April, 30th at 4:00 pm, the RWTH Aachen SPE student Chapter 22/23 held the very first Webinar, on the topic: "Reservoir modeling, simulations, and assessment for CCUS" presented by Melianna Ulfah MSc.
Carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) has been an interesting topic for all energy companies as it's considered one of the solutions to clear the atmosphere from CO2.
About the speaker
Melianna is an Indonesian geoscientist passionate about championing equitable, science-driven, and ambitious climate solutions. She started her career in the energy industry as a geophysicist assessing pre-drilling geohazard risks in several offshore oil fields. Through her master's thesis, she delivered policy recommendations to Texas General Land Office based on experiment results in geoscience and reservoir simulations, in order to optimize Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) operation. During her fellowship at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, she helped characterize CO2 storage sites in Northern California and calculated the static storage capacity of the depleted gas fields. She is currently assisting energy companies to accelerate their CCS projects and help decarbonize the oil and gas industries with Tetra Tech.
Want to catch up on the webinar? Here is the SUMMARY
Date: Saturday, April 30, 2022
Location: Online via Zoom
No. of participants: 15
On April 30, the SPE RWTH Aachen Student Chapter had the pleasure to welcome Melianna Ulfah, M.Sc who is a CCUS Geoscientist in Tetra Tech, a company that provides a wide range of services in the field of carbon capture, utilization, and storage. Ms. Melianna Ulfah presented a webinar about “Reservoir Modelling, Simulation, and Assessment for CCUS”. The session was open to the students of Applied Geosciences, Geo-resource Management, SEG RWTH Aachen Chapter, and other local and international SPE Student Chapters and at least 15 people took part in the event.
Figure 1: Presentation by Ms. Melianna (top left) and the participants.
She started her presentation by talking about the carbon capture and storage basic concept and why CO2 needs to be injected underground. Furthermore, Ms. Melianna also explained about what are the required data to perform reservoir modelling, the important technique such as geostatistical modelling, and estimating the maximum storage that can be used to store CO2 in the oil reservoirs. Ms. Melianna also highlighted the forecast of CCUS demand in the upcoming decades.
It will be such a biggest challenge for companies across the world to store a huge amount of CO2 while at the same time needing to allocate some of the budgets for CCUS operations. The carbon tax system will encounter this issue through fair and clear regulations and policy, so the CCUS can be performed by taking into account economical, legal, and environmental aspects.
Figure 2: Ms. Melianna shares a case study of the CCUS project by utilizing oil migration concepts.
At the end of the presentation, a Q&A session was open where attendees had the opportunity to ask questions either through the chatbox or directly to Ms. Melianna. The high level of interest in the topic was demonstrated by many questions either related to CCUS theoretical or technical aspects, Ms. Melianna answered and discussed all questions. On behalf of all students and the SPE Student Chapter at RWTH Aachen University, we would like to thank Ms. Melianna Ulfah M.Sc for providing valuable insights into reservoir modelling, simulation, and assessment for CCUS and hope to see her again in our SPE Student Chapter.
Written by Fikri Zain Karim, edited by Ryan Bobby Andika.