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Oil companies have turned to EOR to be able to sell moreoil, after exhausting more easily obtainable supplies.The third and most dubious assumption isthat oil companies choose not to developnew wells if they can get more out of existingwells. However, one might attempt to make this‘zero sum production’ claim more rigorous. AnalystJaramillo says “[t]he key argument for CO2-EOR asa sequestration method is that the electricity and oilproduced within the system boundary displaces oil orelectricity from other sources.” For example, assumeBP producing oil in the Gulf means Suncor producesless carbon-intensive tar sands oil in Alberta. Thiseconomic rationalization made by those with apparentmisgivings about supporting CC-EOR is obviouslya non sequitur.Regarding Jaramillo’s point about sources of electricitywithin the system boundary, investing in CC-EORarguably displaces investments in renewables ifit extends the life of a coal plant or results in newcoal-fired capacity that wind or solar could otherwiseprovide.The aforementioned DOE study found CC-EORcontributes little if anything to CCS deployment in partbecause CC-EOR momentum exists to make the oilindustry more profitable. It is clear that for the industrythis is about extracting more oil – growing moreas an industry – than they otherwise could. The oilindustry’s plans for profit growth are not just amoralbut myopically oriented toward selling as much oil aspossible.Exxon CEO, Lee Raymond, famously declared thatthe company was not American and did not makedecisions based on what’s good for America, but hemight as well have said that companies whose aim ismaking money from oil supply do not make decisionsbased on what’s good for the global economy or eventhemselves. 103 Climate disruption will impact all of us.CC-EOR is no more a climate solution than drillingin ultra-deepwater, hydro-fracking, or drilling in theArctic Ocean. These are just next steps for an industrydestroying the climate. Oil companies have turnedto EOR to be able to sell more oil, after exhaustingmore easily obtainable supplies. There is no escapingthat, as Jaramillo states, “without displacement of acarbon intensive energy source, CO2-EOR systemswill result in net carbon emissions.” 104Oil produced from injection of CO2 captured fromcoal plants is arguably is worse than conventionaloil, since it is part of scheme to either build newcoal plants or keep existing plants from shuttering.Emissions from CC-EOR will include emissions fromcoal extraction, processing, new coal combustion (notall the CO2 is captured), not to mention combustionof oil that would otherwise stay in the ground.World-wide, all but three of the thirteen large-scale,carbon-capture projects to have begun operatinguse the captured CO2 for EOR operations. None ofthe three non-EOR operations is a power plant. Theyare gas extraction operations designed to re-injectunderground the CO2 scrubbed from raw naturalgas. One of the three operations, in Algeria, wassuspended indefinitely in 2011. The other two are bothoperated by Statoil in Norway. Statoil avoids payingtens of millions of dollars per year under Norway’scarbon tax system. 105The Global CCS Institute is of course optimistic thatEOR “is promoting early deployment of CCS.” 106However, even if one gives undue acknowledgementto the other 40 carbon capture projects which theGlobal CCS Institute documents on paper couldoperate in the next decade, only 9 aim to sequesterCO2 captured from a power plant. 107 FutureGenwould have been a 10 th and was for quite a whilethe most likely to succeed. FutureGen was the lastremaining large-scale carbon capture power plantproject in the US that aimed to sequester its CO2pollution.Carbon Capture Scam Chapter: 2Page 18

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