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Appearing first as a dot on the horizon, the remote Nini oil field on Europe’s rugged north sea The helicopter slowly comes into view.
The field, once used to extract fossil fuels, is now getting a second lease of life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the ocean floor.
In a process that almost reverses oil extraction, chemical giant INEOS plans to inject liquids CO2 1,800 meters (5,900 ft) below sea level, deep in depleted oil reserves.
The Associated Press took a rare tour of the Siri platform, which is close to the unmanned Nini field, the final phase of INEOS’s carbon capture and storage efforts, named Greensand Future.
When the project begins commercial operations next year, greensand is expected to be european The Union’s first fully operational offshore CO2 storage site.
Environmentalists say carbon capture and storage, also known as ccsIt has a role to play in tackling climate change but should not be used as an excuse for industries to avoid cutting emissions.
future plans
Mads Gade, chief executive of INEOS Energy Europe, says it will initially store 400,000 tonnes (363,000 metric tonnes) of CO2 per year, expanding to 8 million tonnes (7.3 million metric tonnes) annually by 2030.
“Denmark actually has the potential to store our own emissions over several hundred years,” says Gad. “We are able to create an industry where we can actually support Europe in storing large amounts of CO2 here.”
Greensand has struck a deal with Danish biogas facilities to bury its captured carbon emissions in depleted reservoirs in the Nini field.
A “CO2 terminal” that temporarily stores liquefied gas is being built at the port of Esbjerg on the west coast of the Danish Jutland peninsula.
A purpose-built carrier ship, called “Carbon Destroyer 1”, is under construction in the Netherlands.
climate solutions
Proponents of carbon capture technology say it is a climate solution because it can remove the greenhouse gas that is the biggest driver of climate change and bury it deep underground.
He said the world’s top body of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said technology is a tool in the fight against global warming.
The EU has proposed developing at least 250 million tonnes (227 million metric tons) of CO2 storage per year by 2040, as part of a plan to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050.
Gade says carbon capture and storage is the best means of cutting emissions.
“We don’t want to deindustrialize Europe,” he said. “We really want some tools to decarbonize instead.”
Experts from the Geological Survey of Denmark say the Greensand sandstone rock is suitable for storing liquefied CO2. About a third of the rock’s volume is made up of small cavities, said Niels Schausbo, senior researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
“We found that there is no reaction between the reservoir and the injected CO2. And we found that the seal rock on top of it has enough capacity to hold the pressure that is generated when we are storing CO2 in the subsurface,” Schausbo said.
“These two methods make it an ideal place for storage.”
Limitations and criticism
But while there are many carbon capture facilities around the world, the technology is far from scale, rarely using fossil fuel energy in their operations and capturing only a small fraction of emissions worldwide.
The Greensand project aims to bury 8 million tonnes (7.3 million metric tons) of CO2 per year by 2030. The International Energy Agency says about 38 billion tons (34.5 billion metric tons) of CO2 were emitted globally last year.
Environmental campaigners say the CCS has been used as an excuse by industries to delay emissions reductions.
“We can impose CCS on a very small number of areas where it is really difficult or impossible to reduce emissions,” said Helen Hegel, head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace Denmark.
“But when almost all sectors of society are saying, we need to just capture and store emissions instead of reducing emissions – that’s the problem.”
While the chemical giant accelerates carbon storage efforts, it is also hoping to jump-start development at another previously closed North Sea oil field.
Defending the company’s plans, Gade said, “The footprint we gain from importing energy relative to domestic or regional oil and gas production is much more important for the transition than importing with a higher footprint.”
“We see a purpose in doing this for a period while we are preparing a transition for Europe.”
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