The U.S. Department of Energy has announced $27.9 million in funding to look at the risks of storing greenhouse gas carbon dioxide underground, part of $35.8 million allotted over four years to coax industry into doing more carbon-storage work.

The money was first reported by Scandoil.com in the spring of 2009, although this appears to be the first concrete alotment for storage only. Coal emissions are far more carbon-concentrated and as well as being the focus of the work being supported.

An exhaustive report in this month's Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine compares coal carbon-capture and storage with "the oil industry's gift" to fighting global warming.

Also on Tuesday, the oil and gas industry’s own CO2 Capture Project released a definitive report on the technical issues of storage and the protocols available to address them. The report draws on the shared expertise of the CCP participants BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Petrobras, Shell, StatoilHydro, Suncor, EPRI and Repsol YPF. Researchers from the European Commission, Norwegian Research Council, U.S. Energy Department and U.K. DTI contributed to the 86-page, “A Technical Basis for Carbon Dioxide Storage”.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has written that CCS from oil, gas, coal and industry could contribute up to 55 percent of emissions cuts the world is hoping to achieve.

The report covers four main areas: site selection; well construction; monitoring and development plus operations and closure.

“With this report, the oil and gas industry is transferring decades of experience and nine years of technology development to the fledgling industry of CCS,” the Capture report’s team leader Scott Imbus was quoted as saying.

Tags: CCS