Benchmarking CO$_2$ Storage Simulations: Results from the 11th Society of Petroleum Engineers Comparative Solution Project
Abstract
The 11th Society of Petroleum Engineers Comparative Solution Project (shortened SPE11 herein) benchmarked simulation tools for geological carbon dioxide (CO) storage. A total of 45 groups from leading research institutions and industry across the globe signed up to participate, with 18 ultimately contributing valid results that were included in the comparative study reported here. This paper summarizes the SPE11. A comprehensive introduction and qualitative discussion of the submitted data are provided, together with an overview of online resources for accessing the full depth of data. A global metric for analyzing the relative distance between submissions is proposed and used to conduct a quantitative analysis of the submissions. This analysis attempts to statistically resolve the key aspects influencing the variability between submissions. The study shows that the major qualitative variation between the submitted results is related to thermal effects, dissolution-driven convective mixing, and resolution of facies discontinuities. Moreover, a strong dependence on grid resolution is observed across all three versions of the SPE11. However, our quantitative analysis suggests that the observed variations are predominantly influenced by factors not documented in the technical responses provided by the participants. We therefore identify that unreported variations due to human choices within the process of setting up, conducting, and reporting on the simulations underlying each SPE11 submission are at least as impactful as the computational choices reported.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.15861,
title = {Benchmarking CO$_2$ Storage Simulations: Results from the 11th Society of Petroleum Engineers Comparative Solution Project},
author = {Jan M. Nordbotten and Martin A. Fernø and Bernd Flemisch and Anthony R. Kovscek and Knut-Andreas Lie and Jakub W. Both and Olav Møyner and Tor Harald Sandve and Etienne Ahusborde and Sebastian Bauer and Zhangxing Chen and Holger Class and Chaojie Di and Didier Ding and David Element and Abbas Firoozabadi and Eric Flauraud and Jacques Franc and Firdovsi Gasanzade and Yousef Ghomian and Marie Ann Giddins and Christopher Green and Bruno R. B. Fernandes and George Hadjisotiriou and Glenn Hammond and Hai Huang and Dickson Kachuma and Michel Kern and Timo Koch and Prasanna Krishnamurthy and Kjetil Olsen Lye and David Landa-Marbán and Michael Nole and Paolo Orsini and Nicolas Ruby and Pablo Salinas and Mohammad Sayyafzadeh and Jakub Solovský and Jakob Torben and Adam Turner and Denis V. Voskov and Kai Wendel and AbdAllah A. Youssef},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.15861},
year = {2026}
}