Earth Equity News

Burying Carbon at Norwegian Offshore Rig Stirs Hope and Controversy. By Pierre-Henry Deshayes, AFP, May 25, 2008. "Norwegian oil and gas group StatoilHydro, has injected some 10 million tonnes of CO2 into a deep saline aquifer one kilometre [under the seabed for the past 12 years in a pioneering project from its Sleipner platform in the North Sea]... The natural gas extracted by Sleipner has a carbon dioxide content of nine percent, almost four times the commercial quality target of 2.5 percent, requiring the company to reduce the level by filtering it with amines on a platform adjacent to the main structure. Since it was already being filtered, the question was then whether to release the CO2 into the atmosphere or to capture it. A carbon tax imposed as of 1991 on Norway's offshore sector led the group to opt for the second solution... 'We bury every year the same amount of CO2 as emitted by 300,000 to 400,000 cars,' said Helge Smaamo, the manager of the Sleipner rig, a structure so large that the 240 employees ride three-wheeled scooters to get around... There are no figures available on how much StatoilHydro has saved, but with the carbon tax at its current level of 66 dollars per tonne, StatoilHydro would have to pay 66 million dollars a year to release one million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere... But all this does not make Sleipner a 'green platform.' The enormous gas and diesel powered generator that provides electricity and compresses the gas, and the flare that burns off the impurities, together release a total of 900,000 tonnes of CO2 per year -- as much as the volume of gas buried under the seabed each year. The CCS technology could one day be expanded to other industries. The main markets for carbon capture storage are the large stationary sources of CO2 such as coal-power plants, natural gas refining, fertilisers and petrochemical plants, and iron, steel and cement plants. The idea of CCS is however a hotly debated idea, even among environmentalists. Greenpeace, which published a report in early May entitled False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won't Save the Climate [PDF, 44 pp], is spearheading the opposition."