What to Do With CO2
by Franklin L. Foster, Ph.D.
Global Warming! Climate
Change! Greenhouse Gases! Are these the new alarms of Chicken Little?
Environmental knights (e.g.. Al Gore) are girding up to fight the new
dragons of the 21st Century and the petroleum industry will
certainly be among them. While the problems may be over-hyped, [oil
production processes contribute less than 3% of global greenhouse gases],
and some of the proposed "solutions" may turn out to be
counter-productive, [grain based ethanol production and processing
consumes 3.5 times the energy it produces]; never-the-less, political
realities mean that these issues are not going to go away. It may be
far better for the oil and gas sector to react pro-actively to the
political/social momentum, rather than reactively and defensively.
As it turns out, if we are
serious about reducing CO2, the oil and gas industry have the
expertise and technology to accomplish this in a big way, through, for
example, various forms of carbon sequestration. In the slide show
available in the link below, there is an examination of some of the
current issues, and a detailed overview of various ways of responding to
them. Highlighted are areas where the oil and gas industry can
become part of the solution, via for example, providing carbon
sequestration which can be used to increase oil production while, at the
same time, possibly, in the mad-cap world of "carbon taxes", allowing oil
and gas companies to earn revenue in new ways.
The presentation was made to the Petroleum
Society of CIM, Lloydminster (Heavy Oil) Section in September 2007 by
Dr.
Maurice Dusseault of the University of Waterloo, Department of Earth
Sciences.
For Slide Presentation -
Click Here
Please Note: Slides contain copyrighted material. Not to be used without
permission.
[You may need to tell your computer to accept Active-X to
see the slides]
