By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 8 -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Statoil ASA agreed to work together toward a project that would capture carbon dioxide from power plants and use it for enhanced oil recovery at Draugen and Heidrun oil and gas fields off Norway.
Statoil Chief Executive Helge Lund said at a news conference in Oslo that the project is in its early phases and that he was not certain when the companies would make a final decision.
"There are many pieces that must fall into place before a decision to invest," Lund told reporters.
The companies tentatively plan for various project elements to be phased in during 2010-12. Executives added that the project depends on substantial government funding and the involvement of industrial stakeholders and electricity users in the region.
The proposal consists of a gas-fired power plant and methanol production facility at Tjeldbergodden, providing CO2 to Draugen and Heidrun fields. Power from the plant also will be provided to the fields, enabling near-zero CO2 and nitrogen oxide emissions from these installations.
The project could potentially store 2-2.5 million tonnes/year of CO2.
"This is an important milestone for Shell towards our vision for greener fossil fuels with part of the carbon dioxide captured and sequestered underground," Shell Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer said in a news release.
Shell has worked with CO2 injection for EOR since the 1970s.
Statoil is involved with CO2 storage in Sleipner field in the North Sea, Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea, and In Salah field in Algeria.
Statoil extracts CO2 from produced gas on the Sleipner West platform off Norway and reinjects it for storage. Sleipner's produced gas contains about 10% CO2. Sales specifications call for gas with no more than 2.5% CO2.
Excess CO2 is injected into an aquifer at 3,000 ft. Sleipner sequesters about 1 million tonnes/year of CO2.
Statoil also has plans to reinject into an aquifer the CO2 removed from gas produced from its Snøhvit development (OGJ, Nov. 25, 2002, p. 38). It expects Snøhvit to produce gas containing 5-8% CO2.
CO2 separated onshore will be piped back to the Snøhvit subsea development for injection into a 45-75 m thick sandstone at 2,600 m below the seabed. Statoil expects to inject 700,000 tonnes/year at that project.
In Algeria, Statoil and Sonatrach are partners in a project operated by BP PLC that will inject about 1 million tonnes/year of CO2 into an In Salah gas reservoir.
