North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Another day, another madcap climate scheme. This one ‘would bring down the costs of storing carbon emissions and postpone expensive decommissioning of North Sea oil and gas infrastructure’, says Phys.org. That’s what the computer model says anyway.

North Sea oil and gas rigs could be modified to pump vast quantities of carbon dioxide emissions into rocks below the seabed, research shows.

Refitting old platforms to act as pumping stations for self-contained CO2 storage sites would be 10 times cheaper than decommissioning the structures, researchers say.

The sites would store emissions generated by natural gas production, and could also be used to lock away CO2 produced by other sources—such as power stations—helping to combat climate change.

Offshore sites

Edinburgh researchers analysed data from the Beatrice oilfield—15 miles off the north east coast of Scotland.

They found that existing platforms could be re-used as storage sites by making minor modifications.

Using a computer model, they worked out that, over a 30-year period, the scheme would be around 10 times cheaper than decommissioning the Beatrice oilfield, which is likely to cost more than £260 million.

“Removing platforms at large expense is short-sighted. Re-using them to dispose of CO2 in rocks several kilometres beneath the seabed will not only be cheaper, but provides a cost-effective means of cutting the UK’s CO2 emissions to meet the 2050 net-zero target,” says Jonathan Scafidi of the School of GeoSciences.

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August 9, 2019 at 06:44AM