LOOMING TURF WAR MAY STYMIE AUSSIE CO2 STORAGE PLAN
07.31.08 - Leído 32 veces. Enviar esta notaFayen Wong
Australia’s ambitious plan to bury its carbon dioxide emissions under the seabed could be constrained by a potential conflict between petroleum companies and government entities seeking offshore sites to test carbon storage technology, industry leaders said on Wednesday
PERTH, Australia; July 31, 2008.- Australia, one of the world’s biggest per-head polluters, is planning to establish a legislative framework for carbon capture and storage (CCS) under the sea in a bid to combat climate change.
CCS could keep up to a third of all man-made carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, a boon at a time of soaring emissions of the greenhouse gas. It captures carbon dioxide before it is emitted into the atmosphere and then buries it deep underground.
But potential tensions between oil and gas companies and government groups seeking to find possible locations to inject carbon dioxide underground are making access to these sites difficult, said Peter Cook, chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) in Australia.
“The fact of life is that there is a very large capacity for Australia to bury its carbon dioxide offshore, but this is likely to result in an impasse between exploration and petroleum companies and the CCS industry,” Cook told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference on carbon storage.
Tensions could arise because the offshore areas held by petroleum companies are often areas that have good potential for carbon dioxide storage, but energy firms fear the take-up of carbon storage near their oil and gas fields could jeopardise their resources.
“We need to create a position where there are no losers. But at the moment, I suspect what the oil and gas industry feels is that it will be the loser,” Cook said.
The CO2CRC is a research agency sponsored by state governments and industry groups. The centre is leading a carbon dioxide underground storage project in Victoria’s Otway Basin.
The pilot project, which has pumped 13,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions out of its 50,000-100,000 tonnes target since April, aims to capture the carbon dioxide emitted from the coal-fired power plants concentrated on the southeast coast Australia.
Uncertainties over the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme, regulatory uncertainty on carbon dioxide storage and a lack of exploration in the country were among other factors hampering the progress of carbon capture and storage technology, Cook said.
Current government legislation does not allow for CCS activities in Commonwealth offshore waters, but the act is being reviewed and several states are also developing legislation to enable CCS in their jurisdictions.
CONTAMINATION FEAR
ExxonMobil’s Australian unit has said it does not want to inject carbon dioxide into the seabed of its fields in the Bass Strait, located off the southeastern state of Victoria, because this might contaminate its oil and gas fields.
When it comes to burying carbon dioxide on land, Cook said it tends to be farmers who worry about the CO2 gases affecting ground water.
David Whitford, deputy chief of petroleum resources at Australia’s top scientific research agency, CSIRO, said these were valid concerns, but the risk of contamination largely depends on the structure and geology of the field.
Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long-term storage of CO2 is a relatively untried technology and there is no large-scale power plant operating with a full carbon capture and storage system.
Furthermore, a lack of public funding plus legal concerns and safety worries are casting doubts over new projects.
Costs are also a major problem: the UN Climate Panel estimates the penalty for emitting carbon dioxide would have to be stable at US$25-$30 a tonne to make carbon storage viable — pushing up the cost of everything from electricity to steel as the price of slowing climate change.
There are already four oil and gas projects which are burying their CO2 emissions below the seabed, including StatoilHydro’s Sleipner project in the North Sea, the Snohvit gas field in the Barents Sea, the Weyburn project in southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada and In Salah project in Algeria.
Still, Cook said the oil and gas industry in Australia was in the best position to lead the development of the carbon capture and storage technology given its extensive experience in this field.
“So far the CCS industry in Australia is still a faceless entity, but it’s likely that the oil companies could take this forward since they are the ones with all the know-how and technology,” he said.
(Reuters)
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