Carbon dioxide? Norway can't get enough
Date: 02-Sep-02
Country: NORWAY
Author: Barbara Lewis
The focus is growing on returning the pollutant to oil and gas reservoirs, a process which could help the world's third largest oil exporter to meet its Kyoto commitments.
Depending on the complexities of individual reservoirs, it can also have the side effect of increasing pressure and enabling even more more hydrocarbons to be pumped out.
State-dominated oil company Statoil has pledged to use the technique of re-injecting carbon dioxide into rock strata, as it develops the Snoehvit gas field in the environmentally-sensitive Arctic Barents Sea.
Statoil has already used the technique at its Sleipner field, a spokeswoman said.
The company argues that putting back into reservoirs carbon dioxide produced as a bi-product of oil and gas exploration is environmentally friendly.
A parallel proposal to dispose of carbon dioxide by injecting it in liquid form into the Norwegian Sea has been vetoed by Norway's environmental minister.
But on the issue of injecting the gas back into reservoirs, even Norway's leading environmental activist Frederic Hauge commented: "The biggest problem is getting a big enough volume of carbon dioxide."
He said his Bellona environmental group had helped to find development partners to facilitate work by oil major Shell on a gas-powered zero emission fuel cell which could be used to provide energy on offshore rigs. At the same time, the cell would produce almost pure carbon dioxide ready for re-injection.
INNOVATION AWARD
At Norway's largest gathering of the oil and gas industry, Offshore Northern Seas (ONS) which ends last week, Norske Shell, the Norwegian unit of Anglo-Dutch major Royal/Dutch Shell, was awarded the conference's innovation award for the fuel cell, which could help Norway to meet its Kyoto commitments.
Under the Kyoto Protocol on reducing emissions in greenhouse gases, Norway must reduce total emissions by 16 percent within six to 10 years.
Norway's oil and gas exploration activity is responsible for some 30 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, Shell says. Onshore, Norway relies chiefly on emission-free hydro-electric power.
The zero-emission solid oxide fuel cell is not here yet, however. Shell said it plans to set up a pilot plant in western Norway, beginning in 2004.
Hauge estimates that orders for between 150 and 250 fuel cells for the southern part of the Norwegian sea would be needed to make a factory viable.
