UAE carbon capture storage to cost up to $3bn

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: SNC-Lavalin said the UAE's CCS network would cost up to $3 billion. (Getty Images)

A plan to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) network to reduce emissions and boost the UAE's oil output would cost between $2 billion and $3 billion, an executive of Canada's SNC-Lavalin said on Tuesday.

The project could reduce carbon emissions from the UAE - which is among the highest greenhouse gas emitters per capita in the world - by around 10%, said Doug Macdonald, principal consultant in SNC-Lavalin's chemicals and petroleum business.

Engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin is close to completing a feasibility study on the project.

The study has identified four to six projects with an approximate cost of $500 million each that could be quickly executed, Macdonald told the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in the UAE capital.

Reductions in the UAE's carbon emissions would come to between six million and eight million tonnes per year, he added. That was from a total of around 76 million tonnes per year of present and planned emissions in the UAE, he said.

The UAE's cheap energy, the relative proximity of emissions sites to oil fields and the abundance of large reservoirs that could be used to store the carbon would make the project cheap compared to similar plans elsewhere, he added.

"We have identified between six to eight million tonnes of CO2 that could be put away at very competitive costs," he said. "If you can't do it here, then you can't do it anywhere."

The project would be the largest single integrated CCS project in the world, Macdonald said.

The aim of the project is to pump the carbon to oilfields for injection underground to maintain oil pressure and boost output, while freeing up the gas that is currently injected.

The UAE, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, needs the gas for power generation to meet rising demand as petrodollars fuel an economic boom.

BP was talking to state oil firm Abu Dhabi National oil Company (Adnoc) about a potential role in carbon capture projects, said BP's CO2 project manager Iain Wright at the same conference.

Advocates say CCS is vital in the fight against climate change, although no commercial-scale power plant uses the technology yet.

In other countries, lack of public funding, legal doubts and safety concerns have cast doubts over mooted projects. Abu Dhabi's Masdar, which commissioned the SNC-Lavalin study, said last week it hoped to clarify its position on whether to go ahead with the project in the second quarter.

Masdar is an initiative set up by the Abu Dhabi government to develop sustainable and clean energy.

The Abu Dhabi government will pump $15 billion into Masdar to fund the first phase of development of green energy, including building the world's largest hydrogen power plant. The 500-megawatt plant will be developed with BP and Rio Tinto.

The projects are aimed at positioning Abu Dhabi as a pioneer of alternative energy and at reducing its emissions.

According to a UN Development Programme report issued last year, UAE greenhouse gas emissions were 34.1 tonnes per head in 2004, the third highest in the world after Qatar and Kuwait and well above US per capita emissions of 20.6 tonnes. (Reuters)

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