Status of CCUS Project Viability for Mumbai Offshore and Cambay Basins, Western India

India, a country with a population of 1.4 billion, requires a massive amount of energy resources to sustain its expanding infrastructural needs. Since the country’s energy sectors continue to be largely dependent on the generation of energy from fossil fuels, it is among the top emitters of CO2 which was estimated to be around 2.5 Gt in the year 2024. Hence, India still faces significant difficulty in controlling its high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adhering to the Paris Agreement’s rules. However, the Government in India is focusing on green technology like the use of fuel cells and the hydrogen-based economy to minimize these challenges. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is one such technique that can help in managing a nation’s overall GHG emissions. CCUS is a three-step procedure that involves capturing carbon, its transportation, and storage for future usage. The third stage of the process, where captured or transported carbon is stored in geologically secure and economically feasible subsurface formation, is also known as carbon sequestration. According to a report by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MOPNG), India has 26 sedimentary basins that together have a geological storage capability of 500–1000Bt. According to MOPNG’s proposed 2030 roadmap for CCUS, exploiting the nation’s tremendous capacity for storing CO2 can help it reach its net zero emissions objective and reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions in the environment. The current study focuses on the possibilities for the geological CO2 storage potential in highly producing category-1 hydrocarbon basins of western India, the Mumbai offshore and Cambay basins. Over the last four decades, these two basins have demonstrated their hydrocarbon potential, and their underlying stratigraphic records are well-studied and ideal for CCUS. According to studies carried out by MOPNG, the Mumbai offshore basin (a mature oil field), which is now in the brownfield development phase, is the best option for CO2-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and has the potential for geological storage of about 9.25 Gt. Similar to this, national oil and gas (E&P) companies have estimated the Cambay basin’s capacity to store CO2 to be around 16.13 Gt. A current study covered a quick techno-economic assessment and risk analysis of CCUS in the two basins mentioned above.