Saline Aquifer Carbon Storage Estimates

Saline formations throughout the BSCSP region offer great potential for future sequestration activities. Extensive deep saline aquifers are present in Paleozoic and Mesozoic formations of Montana and Wyoming's sedimentary basins. These basins account for greater than 750 million acres underlain by sedimentary units potentially suitable for sequestration. BSCSP estimates that greater than 400 billion metric tons of CO₂ could be sequestered in the region's saline aquifers, adequate to store the region's cumulative anthropogenic CO₂ for many years.

Data Sources: BSCSP calculated saline aquifer capacity estimates according to the methodology developed by the Capacity and Fairways Subgroup of the Geologic Working Group of the DOE Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships. For details regarding this methodology, please refer to Appendix B of the 2008 Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada.