Carbon Capture and Storage
We all need to do something about global warming and storing carbon sounds a great way to go. This is being done in the North Sea by the Norwegians. The are piping CO2 out to offshore oil rigs that are no longer in use because the oil field is now depleted and they are pumping the CO2 deep into the basins below the seabed. The have buried 100 million tons of CO2 in this way.
I listened to an interview with a spokesperson from Exxon Mobil on Sunday morning and they are very concerned about talk of using this technology in the Gippsland basin because it is not depleted. He stated that they are a serious risk of the CO2 being pumped down bubbling up through the oil and contaminating it. He said the technology should only be used in depleted basins. He also said that while it is simple to separate CO2 and methane, because they do this all the time in coal mines, CO2 and oil are hard to separate.
He said that technically it would be very feasible to use the Moomba basin but it would not be cost effective because of the distance to pump the CO2. He also pointed out that although they are very experienced in pumping gases very long distances, CO2 is very corrosive and the cost of pipeline maintenance would be huge.