Burying Carbon Dioxide Beneath the Sea

Up early on this 15 degree morning reading the Telegraph UK about BP, and their environmental moves. “One such project is in Scotland where the battle against rising greenhouse gas emissions has focused on one of the main culprits, carbon dioxide. At one power station, the company is combining a number of proven technologies to allow the facility to produce electricity using hydrogen derived from natural gas.

Potentially harmful carbon dioxide removed in the process will be captured and sent to an oil field approximately 150 miles offshore. There it will be safely returned to the natural environment where it came from – a reservoir 2.5 miles beneath the seabed. In this ‘pen’, it will be stored safely and indefinitely.

The level of carbon dioxide emissions is expected to fall by 90 per cent, the company says, as a direct result of this project.

A similar endeavour is being operated slightly further from home, at BP’s natural gas facility in Algeria. C02 that would otherwise be released into the air is being safely returned to the natural environment where it came from – one mile underground.

This so-called “capture and storage” project is one of the largest ever undertaken and BP intends to replicate its Algerian model on a wider scale in the US.