Norway Supports CO2 Disposal Below North Sea Floor - Costs High - Reuters

[hatrack]

TRONDHEIM, Norway - The North Sea could be a vast dumping ground for carbon dioxide under a UN-led drive to slow global warming but high costs and legal barriers need to be overcome, Norway's oil minister said on Tuesday.

Odd Roger Enoksen told Reuters that many subsea oil and gas reservoirs in both the Norwegian and British sectors of the sea seemed suitable for long-term storage of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for pushing up global temperatures. "There are big geological structures on the Norwegian shelf that could also handle carbon dioxide from other nations in the North Sea basin -- Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain -- the closest countries with big carbon dioxide sources," he said.

Norway is the world's number three oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia and Russia and western Europe's biggest gas exporter. The UN's Kyoto Protocol sets caps on carbon dioxide emissions by 35 industrial nations as part of a drive to brake warming. Enoksen said the oil and energy ministry was studying legal hurdles to storing carbon dioxide -- some linked to the London Convention on marine pollution -- but expressed confidence that they could be overcome.

EDIT

High costs could be a far bigger hurdle than legalities. A study by Norwegian pipeline operator Gassco of the storage potential at six oil and gas fields off Norway said such projects would all run at big losses even if the CO2 were used to boost oil recovery. And the International Energy Agency reckons that typical costs of stripping out carbon dioxide, transport and storage could be US$35-$55 a tonne.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36917/story.htm

[benburch]

1. Compare the cost...

...to a 20 foot sea level rise.