Innovative Carbon Technologies is the commercial arm of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC).
CO2CRC says geosequestration – the capture and storage of CO2 – is capable of delivering “deep cuts” into greenhouse gas emissions.
“I believe results from the Gorgon geosequestration data well drilled by Chevron have been very positive,” said Hilditch.
Other geosequestration pilot projects underway in Australia included ZeroGen in Queensland, and the Monash and Otway projects in Victoria.
Australia was already making plans to pump emissions from the country’s single largest greenhouse gas-producing area – the Latrobe Valley’s coal-fired power stations – into depleted Bass Strait gas fields. Once this was viable, 60 million tonnes of CO2 per annum would be stored safely rather than pumped into the atmosphere
Overseas, 70 projects were underway in West Texas and 43 were being implemented in the Alberta Basin. Many more were being run in other parts of the US and Canada.
In Canada’s Weyburn enhanced oil recovery project, EnCana had been injecting CO2 into an oil field for 20 years with positive results.
Meanwhile at Norway’s Sleipnir field, Statoil was capturing CO2 from the gas stream, compressing the greenhouse gas to make it liquid-like and storing it in an aquifer adjacent to the field. This has been happening for 10 years with no sign of leakage.
So carbon sequestration was proving to be viable. However, carbon capture was still too expensive and more research and development was needed to bring down the cost of pre- and post-combustion carbon capture, Hilditch said.
Until this had been achieved, geosequestration would not be economically viable.
NSW jumps on geosequestration bandwagon
Meanwhile, the New South Wales Government has joined forces with the CO2CRC to research the Sydney Basin's potential for geosequestration.
NSW Natural Resources Minister Ian Macdonald today announced the forthcoming partnership at the opening of the CO2CRC's annual research symposium in the Hunter Valley.
CO2CRC chief executive Dr Peter Cook said he believed NSW would benefit from the innovative research to come.
“We are now starting a very important research project into the storage potential of NSW,” he said.
“In collaboration with the CSIRO Flagship Program, we will be conducting a project over the next two years to establish the CO2 storage potential of coal systems in the Sydney Basin near major CO2 emission sites in the Hunter Valley.”
Cook said the sandstones and organic-rich shales surrounding the coal seams would also be evaluated for their storage potential.
Work would also be carried out to determine if coal seams could act as a seal to contain carbon dioxide as well as storing it, he said.
