First, the Kansas/Oklahoma project (a miss-speak): The CO2 from the Coffeyville project is expected to “replace” alternative underground sourced CO2. If this does indeed happen and the project is constructed, no more incremental oil will be produced as a result of capturing this vent stack CO2 at Coffeyville than would have been produced “anyway” and vent stack-sourced CO2 will incrementally be sequestered. The exact final destination of the Coffeyville CO2 has yet to be determined, however. I am a co-founder of Blue Source and I don’t know the CO2’s final destination as we have not completed several key steps in the project development stage. You reached your conclusions and published without knowing the full story. A common mistake in the carbon world today as everyone is rushing to get their opinion published to prove their point. If you have knowledge of the location of CO2 pipelines in Texas and Oklahoma and know the Coffeyville location, you can likely figure out where we are considering laying the pipeline.

As for injecting vent stack-sourced CO2 when no other sources of underground CO2 are competing for the EOR project: I am familiar with the BP study and would agree with many of the calculations on CO2 emissions from a barrel of oil. It should be noted that there are many other factors not covered in this calculation that materially change the end result: emissions associated from the transportation of the oil to the refinery (domestic oil obviously has less as a raw stock and even far less as a refined product), imported oil “net” emissions due to quality issues from refining (approximately 1/3 more than domestic oil), and the big whopper…building out the carbon infrastructure necessary for long term CCS in saline or depleted hydrocarbon reserves “on the back” of oil revenues. Today, we have over 3500 miles of CO2 pipelines (a start to this infrastructure) put in place on the backs of oil revenues. The US will likely need to spend between $30B and $50B in infrastructure to make a dent in CCS. The industry needs VER or Offset revenue streams in order to reach further and inject deeper so that when only offset income is available the system will have significant sunk pipline

You clearly have more than just a mild grasp of the infrastructure issues. Thank you for spreading some of that knowledge around.

Bill

Greens (aka lefties) have a firm belief that is government applies just enough coercive power, anything can be made to work. But in the real world, some things work, and some don’t. The five year plan didn’t.

The cap-and-trade scheme adopted by Europe is a scam, has produced exactly zero reduction in CO2, and just hampers the economy for no benefit at all.

When will you learn the futility of “good intentioned” giant social engineering schemes, backed up by force ?
Don’t be blinded by your ideology, in real life it won’t work.

Besides, don’t you see that when blackouts become frequent because you are hindering the building of new power plants that really supply power (not green feel-good), the public, the voters will kick you out. There is no way you can make people suffer blackouts just for “the future generations” (false) meme.

And stop believing in fairies. There is no green energy. And there is no life without energy.

They believe in some mysterious notion of “green energy” that just does not exist. They believe that if people are forced to sit in the dark (because of blackouts) they’ll go out and invent green energy. They believe that by using brute force you can make people invent anything.

The key premise of this blog — as underscored in the three recent posts on how scientists are underestimating climate change — is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions 60% to 80% by 2050, which means we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption by that amount. It won’t be easy. It particularly won’t be easy if we start subsidizing enhanced oil recovery by calling it carbon offsets.

We don’t need HIGHER production of oil, and certainly not from EOR. Offsets are a voluntary donation to displace one’s CO2 emissions, and thus should meet very high environmental standards. They can’t solve the climate problem, but they can serve a valuable purpose of funneling money toward jumpstarting the transition to a clean energy economy. EOR is not part of a clean energy economy and does not — and should not — be “jumpstarted.”

So Paul and Bill — I can’t agree with you. I would like to see a comprehensive apples-to-apples life-cycle analysis comparing CO2 EOR to regular oil, though.

Jacob — I am not a “green,” I am an energy analyst and technologist. I don’t hate oil and coal — I just hate what their emissions of greenhouse gases are doing to this planet. I don’t want to hinder production of oil, I just don’t wants to subsidize even more production of it.

As for coal, you missed the whole point of my post. The only way to save coal in the long-term is through carbon capture and storage, which we have not seriously begun pursuing.

I think jcwinnie’s point is well taken. People are stuck in BAU, even those who are concerned about global warming.

Also, this constant griping that the government cannot solve problems is hard to understand. Under Nixon’s we got the National Environmental Policy Act (1969), EPA (1970), Clean Air Act (1970), Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act), Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (1972), and Endangered Species Act (1973). Under Ford we got the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974) and Toxic Substances Control Act (1976). Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 and it was ratified in 1988. George Bush Sr. signed the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 that regulated more pollutants and implemented a cap-and-trade system that succeeded beyond all expectations. All of these solved real problems and we’re better off because of them. (I wish some had been more effective than they were, but they were definitely an improvement over BAU at the time they were signed.) Joe could no doubt tell the Clinton legacy much better than I.

I’ve read your bio here http://www.buildings.com/ articles/ detail.aspx?contentID=1766

Could you point to some real, tangible solutions that you have invented, or helped develop , as a M.I.T. Ph.D. in physics ?

Something beyond words… words and more empty words.
Don’t answer, just think about it. Aren’t your talents wasted on being a propagandist ?

By the way - are you also an expert in hydrogen, as it says there ? Where has hydrogen disappeared nowadays ? The way of those abandoned wind farms in California ?

“but they have no solutions of their own to offer.”
Neither have you. Don’t dream. You’re just emitting more and more hot air… there is no substance to all your solutions, just feel-good empty, illusions.

A remark: when blackouts happen, as is normal in many countries (mainly in the third world) people buy home generators and produce pollution three time greater than power stations.

“We don’t need HIGHER production of oil”
That’s green ideology in a nutshell.
The demand for energy is rising, we DO need HIGHER production of oil, there is no other energy available, and capping oil production means - no energy.

The idiotic (and, in my view, mythical) polarization of this issue is deconstructive…and both end-member ’sides’ are to blame. It’s time to work collectively…and the petroleum industry and infrastructure is part of that. I hope people wake up from this ‘us vs. them’ absolutism soon.

I don’t see any mention on your web site of Pyrolysis or Agrichar . Do you have projects in the planning stage on the carbon sequestration front?

The more you learn about this ancient technique of soil restoration the more you’ll see how elegant this solution can be for carbon sequestration, for us all.
Imagine putting the carbon tax funds into the hands of millions of peasant farmers all around the world, building their soil and their net worth at the same time. Please search “AGRICHAR” “BIOCHAR” or
“TERRA PRETA”