By Denise Marray

Gulf Times Correspondent
London

The research into Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) being undertaken by the Qatar Carbonates & Carbon Storage Research Centre (QCCSRC) is making a vital contribution to mitigate the impacts of climate change, but the science will need to be matched with financial and legislative measures.

Speaking to Gulf Times, Martin Blunt, Professor of Petroleum Engineering, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, said: “At the moment there is no financial incentive to inject carbon dioxide (CO2). In terms of the cost of capturing carbon dioxide and piping it to the facilities, rarely is the amount of extra money you get worth it whether for carbon trading schemes or the additional recovery. CO2 from an oil company perspective is a cost – the benefit of putting CO2 underground doesn’t appear as a financial incentive, though in some circumstances the additional recovery on its own is sufficient to make it worthwhile to inject C02.”

The QCCSRC which combines the international expertise of Shell, the local knowledge and expertise of Qatar Petroleum, the resources, assistance and strategic advice of Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), and the research strengths of Imperial College London, through its Energy Futures Lab, is at the forefront of research into CCS.

The programme has the combined aims of strengthening Qatar’s engineering talent and expertise and expanding research capacity in carbon capture and storage and cleaner fossil fuels.

Professor Blunt, the 2011 recipient of the Uren Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers for outstanding contributions to the technology of petroleum engineering made before the age of 45, and 2012 recipient of the Darcy Award, Society of Core Analysts, described some key breakthroughs in the work being undertaken by QCCSRC.

“One of the revolutionary new things we are doing is using X-rays – a bit like very high resolution CT medical scans – to look inside deep underground rocks to see how the fluids are redistributed, how they move and conditions of temperature and pressure. The pore spaces in the deep underground rocks are full of salty water. You inject the CO2 which pushes the water away and then you want to make sure that it never escapes. That is what we are trying to look at. We reproduce what is happening underground and see what sort of fundamental physics underpin the storage processes. We have shown that the CO2 gets dispersed in little bubbles in the spaces in the rocks. Our results have shown that CO2 can be held deep underground – you can have safe, secure storage,” he said.

The research being undertaken is particularly applicable to the needs of the Middle East because it has a focus on the storage of CO2 in carbonates, the sedimentary rock type most frequently encountered in oil fields in the region.

As the research has stated more than half of the world’s conventional oil resources are contained in carbonate reservoirs that are typically extensively fractured. Many of these are in the Middle East and recovery factors are often low: while the fracture network carries most of the flow, the matrix retains the vast majority of original oil in place. These reservoirs are less well understood than the sandstone reservoirs found, for example, in Europe and the Americas.

The Middle East has 62% of the world’s proved conventional oil reserves of which approximately 70% are in carbonate reservoirs. The region also has 40% of the world’s proved gas reserves of which 90% lie in carbonate reservoirs.

Professor Blunt explained that the storing of carbon dioxide in deep underground rocks is just one aspect of a complex and costly process that involves capturing and piping the CO2 to the requisite facilities.

As he put it: “Most of the challenges are above the surface. The amount of CO2 you need to store in order to make a difference requires enormous investments.”

But he pointed out – it is a price worth paying when compared to the cost to the environment due to global warming and its impacts, and competitive when compared to the costs of nuclear power and some renewables.