Carbon capture and storage
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
London
The Geological Society
Media Partner |
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) presents interesting challenges for the oil and gas industry. Putting aside for the moment fiercely held views on whether carbon dioxide is actually harming the climate, on the one hand it is clear that much of the expertise that would be required to implement Carbon Storage is to be found in the oil & gas industry. On the other hand, is there a potential new business angle for the industry and its experts, given that CCS comes with an initial price tag estimated by some as a 25 per cent premium on the cost of electricity - some radical views suggest the cost could double - and also requiring much more coal to be burned, increasing the risk exposure of mining?
At our half day CCS forum, we present the latest thinking on how carbon concerns can affect (help or hinder) the oil and gas industry, current and anticipated carbon capture projects, and the latest knowledge about how carbon dioxide can safely and cost effectively be sequestered and its secure storage be monitored. Above all, we consider whether there is any sort of business in CCS that makes sense!
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Dr Clint joined Sanford C. Bernstein in 2004 and was part of the Energy Team with Neil McMahon covering the Global Integrated Oil sector.
Currently he is the Senior Research Analyst covering the European E&P and Russian Oil & Gas sectors. The Bernstein Energy franchise has become well known due to both the provocative commentary on the commodities and oil stocks, as well as the innovative research that forms the core of their frequent publications. Previously, he worked as an accountant and consultant for KPMG covering energy, gas, and chemical sectors. Dr Clint received his PhD in Geophysics from University College London where he specialised in sub-surface rock physics and is also a Chartered Accountant.
Bernstein Research
Sanford C. Bernstein is widely recognized as Wall Street's premier sell-side research firm. Their re
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Talk Description
This talk will review:
1. Costs and Economics of global CCS Projects
• Economic Valuation of CCS
• Costs and Assumptions
2. CCS – Overview of Environmental Impacts
• Environmental Impacts & Risks from CCS
• Comparison of CCS with Renewable Energy Technologies |
PETRENEL (The Petroleum and Renewable Energy Company Limited) is a privately owned, independent cons
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Talk Description
Earth scientists have long been leading actors in oil exploration and production. They now have additional roles to play in the petroleum industry. One of these new responsibilities is setting out clearly to the widest possible audience the geological arguments for controlling the release of carbon to the atmosphere by human use of fossil fuels. Tackling the carbon challenge requires a depth of public conviction that will come from observational science, rather than from models of imperfectly understood Earth systems. The development in the last century of techniques for dividing geological time into thousands rather than millions of years enables us to bring previous warming events such as that at 55 Ma onto a human timescale (Norris and Rohl, 1999). The cause or causes of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) remain uncertain, but its effects on life are clear enough to show that this 55 Ma warming event is not something we would wish to repeat through our own agency. A transient uplift event in the nascent North Atlantic Ocean may have triggered the PETM (Nisbet and others, 2009). We do know that this transient uplift at 55 Ma led to the formation of the Forties Sandstones in the early North Sea. The oil industry was offered four useful things by that 55 Ma uplift; a reservoir for four billions of barrels of oil, a warning of the deleterious effects for humankind of burning that oil, an example of a potential storage site for carbon captured from coal-fired power stations (Lovell, 2009), and a mechanism for rapid changes in relative sea-level in non-glacial times (Lovell, 2010) |
Earth Sciences is a long-established Department within the University of Cambridge, that offer world
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Talk Description
It is often said that to every problem there is at least one elegant solution and CCS appears to be a most elegant solution to part of the anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 problem. That was certainly the view of many geoscientists in the early days of this technofix. The public however are not convinced. Many of that community have been surprised and disappointed that the public has in general not shared their enthusiasm for what appears to be a rationale and, more importantly, a potentially achievable goal. This presentation examines the interface between science and the public, a public that has already stopped a number of CCS schemes and suggests that lessons learned from other industries can be applied to raise the chances of CCS schemes becoming reality.
(A talk compiled with help from Ben Hedley of Durham University) |
RPS Energy provides a range of technical, commercial and project management support services to the
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Start-up and potential University of Cambridge spin-out venture Cambridge Carbon Capture, is develop
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Talk Description
Carbon dioxide has long been used to enhance the recovery (EOR) of oil from fields within West Texas. Published data indicate that the process can recover 10% of initial oil in place on top of that already won from primary depletion and secondary water flood. Experience has shown that 1 tonne of injected CO2 can deliver 2.5 to 5bbl oil. Typical project lengths are in the order of 15 to 20 years.
For the UK we have no experience of using CO2 for EOR in the North Sea – although in the late 1970s BP did a small trial at one of their onshore fields and, of course, Statoil has 10 years worth of experience on the NOCS gained from the Sleipner project, in which separated CO2 is being injected into a deep aquifer.
Published figures from the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change indicate that the ultimate UK oil reserve, using the current primary and secondary recovery, is in the order of 30 billion barrels. Data on the initial oil in place is less readily available but we can calculate such a figure from the published information on recovery factor, which is around 45%. From this we can estimate the STOIIP on the UKCS to be around 67 billion barrels. Using CO2-EOR an additional 10% of recovered STOIIP equates to 6.7 billion barrels. Given that the West Texas analogue may not be good and a number of the fields may not be suitable for this method of EOR either for technical or logistical reasons let us more than halve the figure and suggest that it may be possible to recover an additional 3 billion barrels of oil from the major UK North Sea fields.
That such a volume of oil could deliver substantial fillip to the UK Treasury at a time of acute need is without doubt but this is only part of the story. A CO2-EOR industry would also enable the processes of CO2 capture, transport, injection and monitoring to be properly developed and the infrastructure to be constructed – ready for full CCS. The UK could lead the world in such offshore technology and then export such know-how.
And the source of CO2?
Take every molecule of industrially produced CO2 from Aberdeen to Hull and there is just about enough to satisfy the potential requirements. The technical difficulties and commercial hurdles for the first such North Sea CO2-EOR projects are huge; so too are the rewards. |
Durham University is a world-class university in two locations: in the city of Durham and at our Que
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