Oil companies agree CO2 injection link-up
Sun 03 December 2006
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Shell and Statoil have agreed to invest in the world's largest oil project using re-injected carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.
The $1.5bn scheme involves taking CO2 from a newly built gas-fired power plant and methanol production facility at Tjeldbergodden in central Norway and piping it to two offshore oil fields.
Up to 2.5m tonnes of carbon dioxide annually - the same as would be produced by a million cars, according to The Guardian - is to be captured and stored in offshore oil fields, Draugen and Heidrun, enhancing oil recovery in the process.
Carbon capture and storage is seen as a potentially vital tool for cutting CO2 emissions and helping to reduce global warming but the technique is still in its infancy.
Shell chief executive Jeroen van der Veer (reported in The Guardian) said: "This is an important milestone towards our vision for greener fossil fuels with part of the CO2 captured and sequestered underground."
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The Guardian news story
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