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Geologists bury CO2 in Texas test
The Associated Press
Geologists are burying compressed carbon dioxide beneath an old oil field to try to determine if the sandstone layer beneath the coasts of Texas and Louisiana would make a good reservoir for the greenhouse gas.
If the plan works, then carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels could be captured from smokestacks and stored underground.
“We’re going to test every aspect of this to determine whether it is safe,” lead researcher Susan Hovorka, with the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology, said in an Oct. 5 story in the Houston Chronicle.
The task of burying 3,000 tons of compressed carbon dioxide, almost the consistency of a liquid, began Oct. 4 in Liberty County. The researchers are using a modified oil well to pump the gas delivered by truck from Baytown and Louisiana into sandstone deposits 5,050 feet below ground.
Hovorka said the gas will soak into the sandstone and saltwater, like bubbles in Coca-Cola. The team expects just 1 percent of the gas will seep into the atmosphere after 300 years. Norway burying beneath North Sea Norway has buried almost 70 million tons of carbon dioxide beneath the North Sea in the area where it has drilled for fuels.
Scientists say storing carbon dioxide emissions below ground could ease global warming problems.
Scientists involved in the Texas-Louisiana experiment are concerned that the shale layer atop the sandstone could crack if there is too much pressure. There is also a worry of a small earthquake.
But Hovorka told the newspaper that the pressure can be closely monitored where the gas is put into the ground.
Environmentalists say this is a plan worth pursuing.
“If it’s something that can be done reliably and safely, then this is one way to mitigate against the impact of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ramon Alvarez, an atmospheric scientist in the Texas office of Environmental Defense.
There still is the problem of cost. Removing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel fumes would be expensive, as would building the infrastructure to transport the gas below ground, but Hovorka told the newspaper the cost would not be exorbitant.
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