Jun 2008 - OPEC

CCS: Facing up to the future
“Of course there are going to be challenges,” says
Schlumberger Carbon Services Vice President Hanspeter
Rohner. “But I think there is enough experience in the oil
and gas industry to handle most of the challenges that
are going to come our way.” In Vienna to deliver a presentation
as part of the Society of Petroleum Engineers’
Vienna Basin lecture circuit, Rohner is referring to the
testing times that lie ahead for the energy industry —
and society as a whole — as it attempts to adapt to the
evolution toward a more carbon-constrained world.
The challenges involved are not insignificant — especially
given that fossil fuels are expected to retain their
position as the leading global energy source for the
foreseeable future. But Rohner, like many in the energy
industry, is facing the future head on.
As the world’s foremost supplier of oil and gas technology
and project management solutions, Schlumberger
has long been interested in one of the major possible
solutions to the carbon issue: “We began looking at carbon
capture and storage (CCS) around ten years ago,” he
explains. “I’m not a scientist, but I’m listening to what
thousands of scientists have been working on.”
In the news
Right on cue, just days before the Vienna lecture on the
methodology and technology required for the geological
storage of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas hit the headlines
once more. Newspapers everywhere reported that the carbon
issue was worse than first thought. This prompted
industry experts to call for faster progress: ‘We need to get
better at carbon capture and sequestration very quickly,’
came the message.
But Rohner does not need reminding and heeded
the signals long ago. As far as he is concerned, CCS
already represents a practical solution. Although he
recognizes that the technology will evolve over time,
he argues that the oil and gas industry’s existing tools
are perfectly good enough for the time being.
“Today, we have to live with
what we have,” he says with a shrug.
After all, CO is frequently used for
2
enhanced oil recovery across the
industry.
To prove his point, Rohner
embarks on his lecture and reels off
an impressive list of Schlumberger
Carbon Services’ CCS achievements
to date. Although only three examples
of large-scale commercial projects
currently exist — they are Sleipner,
owned by Norway’s Statoil; In Salah
in Algeria, a joint venture between
BP, Statoil and Sonatrach (see OPEC
Bulletin January 2008); and the
Weyburn oil field project in Canada
— Rohner and his colleagues have
been involved in them all. In addition, they’re engaged
in many more earlier-stage projects across the United
States, Europe, Australia and Japan.
Further illustrating the relevance of today’s technology,
Rohner addresses the nitty-gritty. He describes the
rigorous screening and selection of potential CCS sites
and the extensive subsurface characterization necessary
to establish whether a particular geological formation
meets the requirements for the long-term injection
of CO2. He talks about designing site-specific injection
and monitoring systems for long-term CO2 storage to
Hanspeter Rohner,
Schlumberger Carbon
Services Vice President
(photo: Schlumberger).
Above: An illustration
of Statoil’s Sleipner
field.
OPEC bulletin 6/08
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