Two new students to NCCS Task 9

Johnathon Osmond (PhD) and Mark Mulrooney (Postdoc) joined the NCCS Task 9 team in the autumn of 2017. Both will contribute to NCCS for 4 years.

NCCS Task 9

The ambitions of Task 9 are to reduce risk related to injecting and storing CO₂ in the continental shelf, and contribute to maximize the CO₂ injection volume for the Smeaheia region (Norwegian Continental Shelf storage region) as well as develop techniques to address fault-sealing and integrity.

Their work

They are currently heavily involved in seismic mapping of faults of the Smeaheia area, as part of the fault-risking study of Task 9. Johnathon will use these results in articles addressing fault-risking scenarios that will make up his PhD, whereas Mark will compile a broader overview into an article on the regional fault evolution.

These younger gentlemen front the Task 9’s dialogue with the Norther Light team. On February 14, 2018, Mark and Johnathon presented their first results from the seismic mapping to the Northern Lights Team at Statoil in Fornebu, with video participants from Statoil in Stavanger and Trondheim. (Northern Lights is Statoil, Shell and Total‘s carbon storage project.)

The Task and topics for Johnathon and Mark to study were developed in collaboration with industry partners to ensure optimal contribution to the research of the Northern Lights project as well as contribution to optimization of CO₂-storage fault risk procedures.

The Task will contribute to the Northern Lights project through knowledge sharing of in depth research related to the derisking of CO₂ storage on the continental shelf.

Short Bios

Johnathon Osmond

Johnathon Osmond is a structural geologist from the United States and currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Oslo.  He earned a B.Sc. in Geology with a Minor in Geophysics from the University of Houston and a M.Sc. in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas in 2017. He also worked for a year as a structural interpreter and modeler at the Center for Integrated Seismicity Research (CISR) at the Bureau of Economic Geology in Austin, Texas.

Johnathon’s research interests include fault seal and trap characterization, seismic interpretation, structure and geomechanics, petroleum/CCS geology, and field geology.

Mark Mulrooney

Mark Mulrooney is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo.  He has a Ph.D. in structural geology from the University Centre in Svalbard, an M.Sc. in Petroleum Geoscience from Royal Holloway, University London, and a B.Sc. in Geology from University College Dublin. As a principal worker on Task 9 of NCCS, his work will focus on structural de-risking of the Smeaheia CO₂ storage prospect, i.e., reducing uncertainty around the prospects from knowledge gained from high resolution mapping and analysis of faults imaged by 3D seismic surveys.