Oil companies have been injecting CO2 into depleted oil fields for over 25 years.

[JohnWxy]

Natural gas is taken from rock formations in which it was trapped for millions of years. About 35% or more of Natural Gas pockets is Carbon Dioxide. So it seems a promising approach to carbon sequestration. Sequester CO2 from IGCC coal plants is better than just pumping the CO2 into the air as we now are.

We need a carbon tax to force the utilities to build IGCC plants. go to www.congress.org to email your Senators and representatives. Tell them we need a carbon tax - NOW.

OR......we could wait and watch for 300 years to be more confident that carbon sequestration works in deep rock formations ... and watch the earth burn!!!!!!!


http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65852

Since the 1970s, oil and gas drillers have injected carbon dioxide into oil wells in a process called enhanced oil recovery that increases the output from those sites.

"This is something we know how to do. We've been doing it for 30 years in West Texas," he said.

Houston-based energy company Kinder Morgan Inc. ships a billion cubic feet a day of the gas through its 1,100 miles pipeline network, much of it from Colorado into the West Texas oil fields.

http://www.geotimes.org/mar03/feature_demonstrating.html

Estimates are that human activity emits 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year (see the feature on page 16 in this issue). One proposed method for reducing how much of the greenhouse gas ends up in the atmosphere is to store the carbon dioxide underground. Natural reservoirs of the gas exist, suggesting that geologic carbon sequestration is feasible.

For the past few years, two projects have, combined, been burying 2 million metric tons per year of man-made carbon dioxide instead of sending it into the atmosphere. And researchers in several countries are investigating other options for geologic storage of the greenhouse gas. One of the main goals of these studies is to verify that the gas can in fact remain buried for at least hundreds of years.

“Not only is geologic showing the potential to account for most of the storage,but also, we already have the experience from the oil and gas industry in dealing with geologic formations and wells,” says Scott Klara, product manager for the carbon sequestration program in the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. “Geologic will be the first line of defense in sequestration.”

[kristopher]

1. No one arues the theoretical possibility

Edited to add one more 'and pumped in'.

But when you incorporate the costs of this type carbon capture and sequestration (where are the 'pockets' you speak of vs where is the CO2 being produced) the value just isn't there for the producer - it prices them out of the market. Alternatively, they look to repositories that are local to their production facilities. Since that most often involves sequestration in aquafers, the outcome of that is pie in the sky promises that pose unknown impact to the hydrological systems of populated areas' water supply. For example, They drill and find a salt water aquafer. Obviously this isn't used for drinking water. But a very possible effect of increasing the pressure of the salt water aquafer would be the intrusion of salt water into a nearby fresh water system serving the population.

Compressed air energy storage uses a similar approach, but the difference is that the CAES is cyclic; they pump it in and take it out.

The CO2 sequestration is pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in, and pumped in and...

But you get the picture, right?

[JohnWxy]

2. Statoils site estimated to be able to hold 800 yrs of CO2 produced by all Europe's fossil fuel power

plants.


"Statoil reports that seismic surveys taken before and after injection started show that the injected gas has not leaked out of the aquifer. The project has put 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the aquifer every year, and estimates are that the formation, which is 250 meters thick, can hold 600 billion tons. SACS (the Saline Aquifer CO2 Storage program), a coalition started to monitor the injected carbon dioxide, estimates that the aquifer can store as much carbon dioxide as would be produced over 800 years from all of Europe’s fossil fuel power plants. "

That's just one formation. The 800 years would give us time to probably come up with other ideas. As long as people didn't sit around chanting "pump in, and pumped in and pumped in...." ad infinitum. LOL



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
For well-selected, designed and managed geological storage sites, IPCC estimates that CO2 could be trapped for millions of years, and the sites are likely to retain over 99% of the injected CO2 over 1,000 years.

[Barrett808]

4. Didn't Statoil abandon this project recently?

Iirc, they decided it was too expensive.

[JohnWxy]

6. do you have a link?

[Barrett808]

15. Here ya go: Oil giants abandon plans for 'uneconomic' green power plant

Shell and StatoilHydro have scrapped plans to build a green power plant that would capture and store carbon dioxide because the project was found to be uneconomic.

The decision to shelve the gas-fired power project, which was to be built at Tjeldbergodden in Norway, casts further doubt on the financial viability of power schemes that capture and safely store greenhouse gases.

In the UK, BP was forced to scrap plans to build a carbon-capture and storage scheme at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, citing inadequate assurances of financial support from the British Government.

Shell and Statoil first announced their plans in March 2006, when Shell hailed the Tjeldbergodden scheme as "an important milestone towards our vision for greener fossil fuels".

(more)

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article3080952.ece

:(

[kristopher]

5. You aren't getting the point.

The building the infrastructure for transmission of the co2 from point of capture to point of sequestration in proven locations is prohibitive. While there are proven sites such as you point to, those sites are very, very seldom in close proximity to the point of carbon extraction. Based on that, do you realize the amount of infrastructure you are advocating for and what the costs would be?

And what do we get for that money? Predictions of 500 years worth of coal in America are now down to nearer 50 years worth because of the way we mine (machinery designed around wide veins of coal) and the fact that coal accessible that way is limited. Mining the narrow veins is seen as a much more difficult economic challenge to meet.

The more we learn, the more it makes sense to devote scarce infrastructure dollars to proven renewable technologies that have a high energy return. R&D on biofuels is also a high priority, but the deployment for personal transportation is a misallocation of funds (except as a replacement for MTBE).

[JohnWxy]

8. OH MY, i thought this could be done for FREE!! What will the cost of the sea level rising a few

feet be? I wonder how cost effective ignoring that would be? I seem to have to keep repeating this to you (you seem to not be able to understand that It's going to take a couple of decades to get about 20% of our power supply from wind. Predicting the contribution of solar is much harder.)

HERE IS THE PART YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND In the time these technologies (renewable energy technologies which we must build to replace coal at least) are built out a hell of a lot of CO2 will have gone into the atmosphere (in those 20 years or so) and it will be getting hotter all the time. There is a time value involved here. ONce the CO2 is in the air it stays there a couple hundred years. Technology to actively remove it from the air is just on the drawing boards now. So it will be years before these can be employed on a large scale and how much will they cost? Shipping CO2 around (or piping it) is a relatively low tech solution by comparison.

YOU see, ONce the CO2 is in the air the temperatures will be higher (, see?) and it will take even longer to turn the situation around. It's better to prevent the CO2 from getting into the atmosphere in the first place. Do you get it?? (rhetorical question , no answer is needed really. (I KNOW the answer.)

The costs of not acting as quickly as possible not only in economic but human terms are very hard to estimate but they are MUCH greater than the cost of the infrastraucture to move CO2 around.

[madokie]

10. Its the same argument I have in that we should be looking at converting the existing

coal plants to gasifiers. We're going to be using these conventional burning plants that we have now for a long time no matter what so why not convert them to a cleaner burn plus more suitable to sequestion type process but when I ask about that all I get is you can't do it, it won't work and on and on while all the time we're spewing more co2 into the atmosphere. The pattern I see here is one is either pro or anti, nukes or renewables and nothing else, no room for someone like myself who sees other possible solutions, short term solutions that we so badly need.

[JohnWxy]

11. I think we willl have to retrofit current coal burners so they can capture CO2 but I'm not informed

on just how effective they are (this is different from IGCC) or what the cost would be. But it is always better to capture the carbon at the source than to let it get out into the environment and then try to recapture it.

hang in there. Practical approaches will have to be taken because we can't wait for twenty years before we take action. What we need is a carbon tax on the electric utilities to force them to these things.

[JohnWxy]

9. RE research on reducing cost of sequestration from Department of Energy site:

http://fossil.energy.gov/sequestration/overview.html



Using present technology, estimates of sequestration costs are in the range of $100 to $300/ton of carbon emissions avoided. The goal of the program is to reduce the cost of carbon sequestration to $10 or less per net ton of carbon emissions avoided by 2015. Achieving this goal would save the U.S. trillions of dollars.

Further, achieving a mid-point stabilization scenario (e.g., 550 parts per million CO2) would not require wholesale introduction of zero emission systems in the near term. This would allow time to develop cost effective technology over the next 10-15 years that could be deployed for new capacity and capital stock replacement capacity.

Modeling and assessments provide the capabilities to evaluate technology options in a total systems context (i.e., considering costs and impacts over the full product cycle). Further, the societal and environmental effects are analyzed to provide a basis for assessing trade-offs between local environmental impacts and global impacts.

In the mid-term, sequestration pilot testing will develop options for direct and indirect sequestration. The direct options involve the capture of CO2 at the power plant before it enters the atmosphere coupled with "value-added" sequestration, such as using CO2 in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operation and in methane production from deep unmineable coal seams. "Indirect" sequestration involves research on means of integrating fossil fuel production and use with terrestrial sequestration and enhanced ocean storage of carbon.

In the long term, the technology products will be more revolutionary and rely less on site-specific or application-specific factors to ensure economic viability.

[NickB79]

13. Plan for Carbon Storage Dropped

"The Energy Department said yesterday that it would ask for new proposals from companies seeking federal aid for capturing and storing carbon dioxide released by coal-fired power plants, officially shelving the FutureGen Alliance project that the Bush administration had supported for five years."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013003621.html

Yep, the Dept. of Energy is on top of finding ways to reduce the cost of sequestration. At the top of their list: give up on sequestering all together. See, isn't that cheap?

[JohnWxy]

14. looking at the Washington Post article you have to wonder if this wasn't a political decision.

from the Bush/Cheney gang? No way.....(LOL)


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/30/AR2008013003621.html

In December, FutureGen selected Mattoon, Ill., as the project's site over three other finalists, two of which were in Texas.

Members of Congress from Illinois blasted the Energy Department's decision, questioning whether it would have been made if the project had been awarded to one of the finalist sites from Texas, Bush's home state. Illinois GOP lawmakers appealed to Bush yesterday, but in a telephone call with Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Timothy V. Johnson (R-Ill.), the president said he was standing by Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman.
~~
~~

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said that the Energy Department's new plan "cannot be taken seriously." He said project applications are due in December, weeks before the administration leaves office. "It makes no sense," Durbin said.

Sell said that the department's concern about costs date to last spring. He complained that the industry group's plan to borrow money against the plant put taxpayers at risk. But Mudd said that banks accepted the plant as collateral, posing no risk to taxpayers. He said that FutureGen's private partners had agreed to cover half of any cost overruns.

[Fledermaus]

3. Exxon Mobil to build plant to remove CO2 from natural gas

If it is feasible, it would be better to build natural gas power plants next to gas fields and put the CO2 back.

ExxonMobil Corp. said it is investing $100 million to develop a natural gas treating technology that could make carbon capture and storage more affordable and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Using the its CFZ process, the carbon dioxide and other components are discharged as a high-pressure liquid stream for injection into underground storage or for use in reservoir management to improve oil recovery. Besides reducing the cost of separation, transportation and reinjection, the CFZ process can eliminate the use of solvents, sulfur plants and carbon dioxide venting in processing of the natural gas, Exxon Mobil said.

The new demonstration plant will process about 14 million cubic feet of gas per day for injection and test a wide range of gas compositions to evaluate the extent of its applicability to the world's undeveloped gas resources.

Construction will begin this summer for operational startup in late 2009. Testing is expected to occur over one to two years.

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/05/05/daily13.html

[NNadir]

7. Geewililiers! You don't say! Gollie Gee!

And you're point is what?

Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who claims to have even the remotest clue about dangerous fossil fuels and dangerous fossil fuel waste - this would include the entire anti-nuke fundie clueless crowd - knows all about this.

As for Sleipner, I said all I've going to say for a while about this stupid misleading shell game when I wrote this diary Kicking Out a Wedge: Norway Drops the Silly Sequestration Scheme.

I note that I was exposing this bit of fossil fuel apologetics for what more than a year and a half ago:

Carbon Sequestration and Climate Change: A Review of the Economics and Safety.

In fact, you scratch the surface of anti-nuke, you will find a fossil fuel apologist underneath.

In recent days we've heard from the same set of people who make all kinds of crapola statements about how nuclear fuel needs a waste repository - which are technically trivial and are well advanced - even if they will NOT prove necessary - all about "lipstick on a pig" approaches to dangerous fossil fuels.

I note, with contempt, that none of these anti-nukes - who are always blabbing about "renewable energy," a trivial and probably dangerous form of energy - seem to have the guts to do what I do, and call for the immediate phase out of dangerous fossil fuels.

Sleipner was always a joke, just like the Utsira wind/hydrogen scheme. The main purpose behind it was to shut up those Norwegians who objected to all the dangerous natural gas power plants being built in Norway. Once the plants were built, operating, and dumping dangerous fossil fuel waste indiscriminately, it suddenly got "too expensive" to sequester this dangerous fossil fuel waste, even temporarily, never mind for eternity.

[4dsc]

12. Nuke are too expensive in today world...

Same ole pro-nuke crapola from you..