Carbon Capture Plans Get Reality Check

July 2, 2008 -- Carbon capture and storage (CSS) is fast becoming the oil industry's favorite solution to the climate crisis, but the seductive simplicity of the idea masks a series of doubts about its viability.

In its simplest form, CSS consists of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) as it is released into the atmosphere, compressing it and then pumping it back into depleted oil and gas fields or other safe underground chambers.

Its attraction for the industry resides in its ability to reduce the harmful consequence of burning fossil fuels -- greenhouse gases -- with energy bosses at this week's World Petroleum Congress (WPC) keen to promote it as a solution.

"Capturing and storing CO2 is the only realistic way of reducing emissions while delivering the energy that the world needs to prosper," the chief executive of British-Dutch oil group Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, said.

But ask an expert when the technique could be deployed on a large enough commercial scale to make a significant reduction in global CO2 emissions, and the response is often less than confident.

"That's a very difficult question," said Olav Kaarstad, a leading expert and special advisor to front-running Norwegian energy group StatoilHydro.

He said the technology exists, with the capture part being the most expensive and underdeveloped. Statoil buries about a million tons of CO2 a year at a site in the North Sea that has been operating for 11 years.

"It's the mother of all CCS projects," he said, referring to the Sleipner project where CO2 extracted during the processing of natural gas is pumped back underground.

Its status as a world leader has little competition, however, with only three other CSS projects elsewhere on the planet. Statoil is involved in three -- two in Norway and a third in Algeria -- with a fourth underway in Canada.

For such an underdeveloped technique, there is a lot riding on the success of CSS: it is routinely factored into projections of future world CO2 emissions and is considered an essential part of reducing them.

"CCS is probably one of the most important key technologies to cope with CO2 emission reduction," the head of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, told AFP at the WPC, which runs until Thursday.

"Without this technology we cannot reduce CO2 emissions substantially," he added.

But the hurdles and barriers that must be overcome are daunting, requiring international cooperation, innovation, vast investment programs and public acceptance -- and all this in a race against global warming.