Eston project ‘can stand on its own feet’
HARNESSING advanced CO2 technology that could extend the life of the North Sea oil fields with carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects that fill up exhausted oil wells, would not necessarily make the £1.5bn Eston Grange Power Project more attractive to investors.
Ben Mayo, chair of the North-east steering group looking at how the region can exploit CCS, said the one big thing that would give them confidence was for Government to ratchet up fossil fuel penalties on dirty energy producers and improve the energy trading scheme.
He was responding to a report today from the Energy and Climate Change Committee, which called for wider adoption of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques, which it said “could quite feasibly bring CCS deployment forward by many years”. It said EOR could also contribute to investment in pipeline infrastructure to enable CCS.
But Mr Mayo, who revealed that the region would bid for finance from Europe for the Eston Grange project next summer, said such “generalisations” were not helpful since they failed to take into account the specific geology needed for storage. The Teesside project, which would sink CO2 150km offshore - much closer than the nearest oil field - was viable without EOR, he said.
The committee also warned that thousands of jobs could be at risk without more support for EOR.
