GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
For decades there have been ideas, proposals, plans and discussions to capture CO2 from TT’s industrial plants (mainly at Pt Lisas), transport them to depleted or heavy oil fields, and inject the CO2 into the reservoirs, thereby producing additional oil due to the reduction of viscosity of the oil. The added benefit is that a large proportion of that CO2 remains sequestered in the ground, instead of being vented to the atmosphere by the industrial plants. To date, none of these projects have been realised on a commercial scale. There is, however, renewed interest in the last few years from local and international companies and institutions. The GSTT is in strong support of carbon capture research and projects being at the forefront of the country’s medium- to long-term plans.
TT is on a journey to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent by 2030. Our small twin island state is 0.02 per cent of the world’s population yet accounts for 0.1 per cent of global CO2 emissions. In fact, Trinidad has one of the highest carbon dioxide emissions per capita in South America which is estimated at 23.6 tonnes per person (2020) or 36.1 million tonnes annually. To achieve our Paris Agreement target by 2030 requires a significant commitment and the use of emerging and other clean energy technologies. One such technology is carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS).
CCUS refers to a suite of technologies which enables carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be captured at the site of emissions such as power plants, refineries and other industrial sites and transported to a location where it can then be utilised in the manufacture or other products or stored underground in geological formations. Capturing carbon dioxide reduces the amount of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and brings us one step further along the journey of global decarbonisation.
In countries with oil production, CO2 which is injected in geological formations can have the benefit of boosting or supporting oil production. This is known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In this application 50-60 per cent of the CO2 is produced with the oil and the remainder if permanently trapped in the reservoir. CO2 can also be injected into reservoirs which are no longer on production (depleted reservoirs) and saline (salt water) aquifers for sequestration. As of 2021, the global carbon capture capacity was estimated at 40 million tonnes per year across 26 operational CCS facilities. Of these operational facilities, 12 can be found in the US. The US alone has an estimated storage capacity ranging from 2.6 to 22 trillion tonnes. Each year, the US injects approximately 62 million tonnes of CO2 underground to help recover oil and gas resources.
In 2022, bp signed on to aid TT’s energy transition through support for its first carbon capture storage (CCS) mapping project to determine underground sites that can be used to store captured carbon dioxide. These include depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs both onshore and offshore. Apart from funding,
