Carbon Dioxide Storage Under the Scandanavian Seabed

BERGEN, Norway, June 3, 2009 (ENS) - The UK and Norway have signed an agreement to cooperate on the development of North Sea sub-seabed geological formations for permanent storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide captured from European sources.

At a high-level conference on Climate Change and Technology Friday in Bergen, Terje Riis-Johansen, the Norwegian minister of petroleum and energy and Lord Phil Hunt, the UK minister of state for energy and climate change, agreed to jointly commission a study on the role of the North Sea, where a demonstration carbon capture and storage project has been underway since 1996.

The Sleipner demonstration project. CO2 extracted from gas production on Statoil's Sleipner West field in the North Sea is stored 1,000 meters below ground and not released to the air. (Photo courtesy North Sea Basin Task Force)

The new study will build a profile for the whole of the North Sea, assessing each country's storage potential and projections of likely volumes and locations of carbon dioxide flows, against a rising price of carbon.

The study will identify network issues and propose methods for managing CO2 flows across borders, the ministers said.

Lord Hunt said, "Today's agreement reaffirms the UK's leadership in tackling the emissions from fossil fuel power generation. Carbon capture and storage has the potential to reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations by around 90 percent. The strength of the UK's offshore industries means we are well-placed to store that carbon dioxide under the North Sea.

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Norway, UK Will Develop Carbon Storage Under North Sea

I think that this is a PR tactic by the energy industry at best. Extraction of gas from the Earth is what releases much of that carbon dioxide, so attempting to bury the byproduct from the industrial processes is not something I see as viable in the long-term.