Services

The Sequestration Value Chain

Windom Peak offers services throughout the sequestration process.  Red components of the chain indicate services not offered by Windom Peak. If you have expertise in these areas and wish to collaborate please contact us.

Click a link in the chain or scroll to learn more.

Site Evaluation

Windom Peak’s site evaluation process will incorporate the customers preferred sequestration site location and potential alternate sites that will meet the customers project requirements (financial, environmental, and public health & safety). The Geoscience and Engineering teams will acquire and analyze the existing drilling and well log data (1940’s to the present), 2D and 3D seismic data, water analysis data, petrophysical data, geochemical and core data, environmental and regulatory, and surface and subsurface leasing requirements. Finally, risk analysis will be performed for each potential sequestration site.

After sequestration site has been identified, additional geologic data collection will be performed. These include drilling a stratigraphic well and acquiring 3D seismic data.

Permitting

Windom Peak’s Engineering and Geoscience teams will prepare and submit the Class VI Well Application to either the states regulatory authority (North Dakota, Wyoming, or Louisiana) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Class VI well permit is required to drill a Carbon Dioxide (CO2) injection well in the United States. Windom Peak incorporates the required geoscience and engineering data (geoscience evaluations, risk analysis, project management plans, and any additional engineering and geoscience data) per the regulatory authority for Class VI Well Permit approval.

The Class VI well permit may take as little a one year (North Dakota, Wyoming, and Louisiana) or 3 or more years with the EPA.

Front-End Engineering Design

Windon Peak’s front-end engineering design (FEED) engineers utilize the results from the site qualification and technical feasibility evaluations to provide the initial design and cost estimate for the project, including injection well design, pipelines, process flow diagram, compressors, monitor and instrumentation equipment, safety equipment, and facility plot. FEED is reviewed by the stakeholders and revised as needed until final approval authorization for detailed design, procurement, and construction.

Windom Peak storage facility designs incorporate more than one hundred years of experience injecting and managing CO2 in the subsurface safely, securely, and economically.

Formation of Special Purpose Entities for Development

Windom Peak establishes Special Purpose Entities (SPE) for developing sequestration projects. These SPEs are stand-alone legal corporations which own and manage sequestration facilities, protecting the emitter, Windom Peak and other projects from legal or financial issues, should they arise. Windom Peak retains 25 to 30 percent of the equity of the project and finances the remainder with investment capital, which may come the emitter, private equity or other development groups. The SPE negotiates a share of the 45Q net revenue after OPEX, shared with the emitter and retains the carbon offset credit revenue.

Windom Peak provides technical advisory services and monitoring responsibilities at market rates to the SPE. This ensures the project is operated safely and continues to meet all of the regulatory requirements and covenants of the variety of insurance policies surrounding the project, emitter, investors, and carbon offset credit purchasers.

Project Insurance

Risks to sequestration projects are numerous:

  • Loss of injectivity leading to reduced ability to inject planned volumes with existing wells and conditions;
  • Shortage of storage capacity which reduces the ultimate capacity to take an emitter’s captured tonnage;
  • Leakage from faults/fractures/overburden leading to regulatory curtailment of operations and potentially remittance of 45Q and carbon offset credits;
  • Leakage from wells, also leading to regulatory curtailment of operations and potentially remittance of 45Q and carbon offset payments; and
  • Facilities and surface equipment failures or downtime that reduces planned injection for an extended period.

Windom Peak works with insurers (AON, Kita (a division of Lloyds of London) and CAC Specialties) developing products addressing these risks.

Construction

Windom Peak is partnered with industry leading resources for constructing sequestration projects:

  • Neset Consulting Services (ND) for well site management, geosteering and construction management; and
  • Halliburton for field products (real time pressure monitoring, specialty cements and packers) and services (well construction, logging (for site qualification and monitoring of CO2 plume evolution), and core retrieval).

Windom Peak engineers have decades of experience with CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects from concept through execution to operations. The team has implemented many engineering solutions to field designs, injection rate control and plume management.

Operations

Windom Peak well designs allow for continuous monitoring of injection rates and bottomhole pressures to ensure compliance IRS requirements documenting quarterly storage volumes and with regulatory obligations surrounding fracture avoidance. As part of pressure management protocols, Windom Peak uses brine withdrawal wells to ‘create space’ in the aquifer for CO2. Several thousand barrels per day of geothermally heated brine are produced for use in industrial applications and potential ionics recovery.

45-Q Management

Windom Peak provides the reporting services for its own projects to the US Treasury. Under contract, Windom Peak will QA/QC other projects and certify injection volumes and retention data. We do not have resources to market tax credits for projects, however.

Carbon Offset Marketing

Windom Peak provides reporting services for its own projects to the carbon offset marketplace. We leave the marketing of these credits to others.

Monitoring and Reporting

Windom Peak provides technical resources, field services and analysis of sequestration project performance per the requirements of regulatory authorities for its own and other operators’ projects. For others’ projects Windom Peak serves as a third party peer reviewer for reporting monitoring results.

In support of emitters, insurers and investors, Windom Peak will provide detailed review and risk analyses of other developers’ projects.

Technical Advisory

Windom Peak staff have extensive experience with CO2 plume management and conformation issues. Invariably, there are unknowns in rock properties for a large sequestration project. Our experience with mobility control and injection management will be an invaluable resource to other operators, regulatory authorities, pore space owners and insurance companies when unforeseen issues arise.