oleocene.org

Buried at sea: Shell's plan for greenhouse gases


Terry Macalister
Thursday March 9, 2006
The Guardian


The biggest-ever scheme to bury greenhouse gases below the seabed is being planned by energy groups Shell and Statoil. The plan will allow Norwegian gas to be developed for Britain with less environmental damage.
Up to 2.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually - the same as would be produced by 1m cars - is to be captured and stored in offshore oil fields, Draugen and Heidrun, at a cost of up to $1.5bn (£867m

Carbon capture and storage is seen as a potentially vital tool for cutting CO2 emissions and helping to reduce global warming but the technique is still in its infancy. The Norwegian project will not reduce existing CO2 levels but will lead to cleaner power being produced to run the Ormen Lange field, which will eventually provide up to 20% of the UK's entire gas needs.
Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said: "This is an important milestone towards our vision for greener fossil fuels with part of the CO2 captured and sequestered underground."

His Statoil counterpart, Helge Lund, said that if it was successful the technology could be used at other fields off Norway and around the world. The country's environment minister, Helen Bjoernoy, said the plan should be seen as a "showcase for Norway as an environmentally-friendly technology country" but she said it was too early to say whether the government would help finance it.

A new gas-fired power station will be built at Tjeldbergodden in mid-Norway which will be used to provide power for the Ormen Lange field and surrounding communities. CO2 from the plant will be injected into the Draugen and Heidrun oil reservoirs to push out further supplies of oil, leaving the CO2 safe under the seabed.

The project will be phased in between 2010 and 2012 and the two oil companies admit they are still relying on "substantial government funding" to get it off the ground. Although this claims to be the biggest offshore project, Statoil has been capturing CO2 on the Sleipner field off Norway since 1996. Shell has been using greenhouses gases since the 1970s in oil recovery in Texas but the cost of seabed schemes has deterred many others.

BP has recently announced an ambitious plan to build a hydrogen plant in Peterhead in Scotland. Carbon dioxide emitted in the production of hydrogen would be reinjected into a North Sea oil field. It also has announced plans for an even larger hydrogen-fuelled plant in California with the CO2 emissions there being piped off to other oil fields for storage.

US says CO2 injection could quadruple oil reserves
Sat Mar 4, 2006 1:25 AM GMT
Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, where oil production has been declining since the 1970s, has the potential to boost its oil reserves four-fold through advanced injection of carbon dioxide into depleted oilfields, the Department of Energy said on Friday.

The United States, the world's top oil consumer, has been successfully pumping small amounts or carbon dioxide into depleted oil and natural gas fields for 30 years to push out hard-to-reach fossil fuels.

The DOE said 89 billion barrels could potentially be added to current proved U.S. oil reserves of 21.9 billion barrels through injection of carbon dioxide, the main gas that most scientists believe is warming the earth.

The DOE gave no time frame for when the extra barrels could be added.

The amount is about what the United States, at current demand, uses in 12 years.

Adding billions of barrels in reserves is dependent upon the availability of commercial CO2, the DOE's fossil energy office said.

"Next generation enhanced recovery with carbon dioxide was judged to be a 'game changer' in oil production, one capable of doubling recovery efficiency," DOE said in a release.

Up to 430 billion barrels could be added by pumping the gas into fields that have yet to be discovered, the DOE said.

COSTLY?

A United Nations report in September said that burying large amounts of carbon dioxide could play a big role in fighting global warming, but would be a costly fix.

Electricity prices could typically rise by 25 to 80 percent if power plant operators adopted the technology, according the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The United States is the No. 1 emitter of heat-trapping gases.

In 2001 U.S. President George W. Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming which requires developed nations to cut greenhouse emissions. Bush said the pact would harm the economy. He favors using technology and voluntary methods of cutting emissions.

Capturing the greenhouse gases is an emerging technology. Power producers, anticipating future mandatory caps on gases most scientists believe are warming the earth, have been considering adding the technologies to their plants.

But because of the expense, none have yet been used commercially.

In Australia earlier this year, six of the world's major polluters led by United States pushed clean energy technology as an alternative way to tackle global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol.

Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration underground was one of the technologies discussed by the group.

But many environmentalists say it would be virtually impossible to measure leaks of the gas especially from oil and gas fields in which holes have been drilled repetitively over decades.

"How do you make sure you're not putting it in one end and leaking it out many other ends?" said Kert Davies, a climate specialist at Greenpeace in Washington. "If it leaks even at 1 percent per year you've thought you've saved something, but in fact you didn't."

Advancements in carbon capturing could be made at power plant called FugureGen. An international consortium of utilities and coal companies will join with the U.S. government to build FutureGen, billed as a "zero-emissions" coal-fired power plant.

It is expected to be operating by 2012. The FutureGen Alliance includes some of the biggest power and mining companies in the world including Huaneng Power International Inc., Peabody Energy, Kennecott Energy, a division of Rio Tinto, American Electric Power, BHP Billiton, Consol Energy Inc., Foundation Coal and Southern Co.



© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.