Several actors have approached the ministry with a desire to be allocated two specific areas for storage of CO 2 . One area in the North Sea and one in the Barents Sea were therefore announced on 10 September in accordance with the storage regulations.
By the application deadline of 9 December, the ministry had received applications from five companies. The Ministry will process the received applications and allocate area in accordance with the storage regulations during the first half of 2022.
Contrast the situation in Norway with Exxon’s apparent attempt to acquire 94 Gulf of Mexico leases at Oil and Gas Lease Sale 257 solely for CCS purposes. BOEM’s Notice of Sale made no mention of CCS, and there had been no environmental or economic assessment of CCS activity.
And how much will the public pay for grand CCS ventures that (although interim measures) will take years to initiate, add new safety and environmental risks, and may never achieve their objectives? The public burden will no doubt include direct subsidies, tax credits, increased petrochemical prices, and the erosion of purchasing power associated with the resulting inflation pressures.
Offshore gas production (see chart below) has declined for the past 20 years and now accounts for only 4% of total US gas production, down from 20% in 2005 and 25% in the 1990s. Associated gas production (oil-well gas) has remained relatively constant owing to the strength in deepwater GoM oil production. 73% of 2020 gas production was from deepwater wells, and was mostly oil-well gas. Associated gas production surpassed nonassociated gas production (gas-well gas) in 2016 and the latter has continued to decline.
The case for natural gas has been well documented (see the EQT letter linked below). Recent natural gas advocacy has emphasized the carbon/GHG advantages given that methane (CH4) is essentially a hydrogen transporter that emits far less CO2 than other fossil fuels when burned. However, natural gas’s other important air quality advantages – low NOx. SO2, and particulate emissions – have greater local significance from a human health standpoint. Those who have ridden a bike behind a natural gas powered bus have no doubt experienced the natural gas advantage firsthand. These buses are literally a breath of fresh air!
Other environmental advantages of offshore natural gas, particularly nonassociated gas, receive less attention but are nonetheless significant. Advantages of nonassociated offshore gas include the following:
Fewer wells required than for shale gas
No risk of fresh water contamination
Platforms provide beneficial reef effects
Minimal space preemption and land disturbance relative to onshore gas production and wind/solar operations
Low facility density and navigation risks relative to wind operations;
Lower elevation and fewer view-shed, aesthetic, and aviation issues than for wind
Minimal avian risks relative to on- and offshore wind operations
Minimal spill risk relative to oil and associated gas production
Significantly less flaring than for oil well gas. While the overall % of US offshore gas production that is flared is low (approx. 1.0 -1.5% from 2016-2020 per EIA data), the % of gas-well gas that is flared has historically been less than 0.5%.
Low natural gas prices and competition from nimble and efficient shale operations have constrained offshore gas exploration. Ultradeep (subsurface) drilling has shown promise from a gas resource perspective but has proven to be expensive and operationally challenging. Some independent producers are still acquiring gas prone shelf tracts and that needs to be encouraged. Consideration should be given to incentives such as making nonassociated gas production royalty free. That would certainly seem preferable to subsidizing complex, expensive, and uncertain carbon disposal operations on offshore leases.
In 2019, the United States emitted 970 million metric tons less than in 2005, with 525 million metric tons of that emissions reduction resulting from replacing coal with natural gas in power generation. Said another way: since 2005, in the United States, all emissions reduction efforts combined have had less impact than coal to gas switching alone.
The emissions associated with the production of natural gas are dwarfed by the emissions reduction of switching from the consumption of coal to gas.
Meanwhile, China, which produced only 3% of the world’s natural gas but the majority of the world’s coal, saw its methane emissions increase by an amount roughly equivalent to adding a second Europe to the world.
What, if anything, will the Judge say about the leases that are intended to be carbon sequestration sites? How can BOEM sell OCS leases for purposes that were neither announced nor environmentally assessed? What do EarthJustice and the other plaintiffs think about the sequestration bids given that the environmental community is split on CCS?
Who is going to pay the enormous cost of sequestration on the Outer Continental Shelf – platforms, wells, pipelines, processing equipment, maintenance, monitoring, decommissioning, and more? The Federal government (i.e. taxpayers) features large in this grand scheme, and will no doubt be assuming most of the economic and performance risks. And all of these costs are for disposal purposes, not for offshore energy production of any kind.
Together with the bipartisan infrastructure bill enacted in November, which included more than $12 billion in funding for carbon capture and carbon removal technologies, the Build Back Better legislation would hand fossil fuel companies nearly every item on their carbon capture wishlist.
More than 400 private jets carrying world leaders and business executives to Cop26 will blast 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Matt Finch, of the Transport and Environment campaign group, said: “The average private jet, and we are not talking Air Force One, emits two tons of CO2 for every hour in flight.
It can’t be stressed enough how bad private jets are for the environment, it is the worst way to travel by miles.Our research has found that most journeys could easily be completed on scheduled flights.
“Private jets are very prestigious but it is difficult to avoid the hypocrisy of using one while claiming to be fighting climate change.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 