Abu Dhabi is the main oil producer in the UAE, pumping around 2.3 million barrels per day. It controls nearly 92 billion barrels of proven crude reserves and 6.5 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, accounting for nearly eight per cent and five per cent of the world's oil and gas wealth respectively.

The excessive fossil energy consumption, the high carbon and GHG emission and the need to effectively recover the country's onshore oil fields, prompted the UAE government to initiate the world's most expensive carbon capture and storage project. Sited in Abu Dhabi being a major oil and gas producer that is heavily reliant on these fossil energy sources to produce its electricity and operate its factories.

The project which is part of the Mardar initiative will contribute to largely reducing CO2 emission in the emirate. It will cost more than US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn), and is expected to remove in excess of five million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year from the emirate's air and push them back into oil reservoirs deep underneath the emirate's desert, Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (Adco), one of the largest oil firms in the world and the emirate's main onshore oil producing company will be able to increase recovery rates from its hydrocarbon wells.

The project involves the construction of two carbon capture plants near the main power facilities in Taweela north of Abu Dhabi city and at the Emirates Aluminium Company (Emal) in Mussaffah just at the eastern entrance of the capital. The construction of the plants will be completed in 2015 but there will be a second stage afterwards. The locations were selected because of the large rate of consumption of oil and gas at those sites.

Carbon and other gases will be captured at those sites. Those gases will be separated from CO2 and released into air as they are not harmful to the atmosphere. CO2 will then be kept in compressors, where water is separated and removed. Afterwards, CO2 will be transferred via a 500km high-pressure pipeline network and sent back into oil reservoirs underground.

For this reason, the project will have a dual effect: it will largely reduce CO2 emission in the atmosphere and at the same time help push crude oil out of the reservoir. This means it will enhance the oilfield's recovery rate.

After completing the CO2 capture project, more than 1million people around Abu Dhabi will bask in a much healthier and cleaner atmosphere, thereby reducing the concentration of GHG in the atmosphere. And the stored, compressed CO2 would help in enhancing the country's oilfield recovery which is a major boost to the country's role as one of the major hydrocarbon resources producers in the region.

Other Posts by: Shehu Khaleel

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Comments

April, 25 2011

Len Gould says

We need to be carefull that we don't wind up simply subsidizing oil producers from the public purse simply for their acquisition of (to them) valuable CO2 for EOR from old fields which they would have done anyway.

What is the percentage of total UAE emissions mitigated by this project? How much additional oil production will the CO2 injection enable which would not otherwise have happened, and how much additional CO2 will that additional oil contribute? How does the amount of that additional contribution of CO2 compare to the amount of CO2 captured and sequestered in the life of this project? How much additional CO2 emissions are incurred by the capture and sequestration process?

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April, 26 2011

Herschel Specter says

Rather than trying to sequester carbon dioxide why aren't they converting it to methanol?

Herschel Specter mhspecter@verizon.net

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April, 26 2011

bill payne says

Although geologic sequestration may become a future necessity, there are major concerns related to expense, safety, and adequate regulation. The added costs of carbon capture, pipeline transport to sequestration sites, and pressurization and injection all will add to the price of electricity. So large-scale carbon capture and storage will only happen if taxes on carbon emissions exceed costs for sequestering the carbon or if sequestration costs are passed on directly to the end user. Cap and trade programs are specifi cally designed to allow industries that can inexpensively sequester carbon to do so and then sell carbon rights to others for whom sequestration would be prohibitively expensive.

Any comments?

http://southwestcarbonpartnership.org/_Resources/PDF/EMv10n2.pdf

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April, 26 2011

Don Hirschberg says

Alas, Herschel, No matter what other reactions used or inter-posed, or what catalysts are used energy (2) must always be greater than energy (1) else we would have a perpetual motion machine.

CH3-OH + 2 1/2 O2 goes to CO2 + 2 H2O + energy(1)

CO2 +2 H2O + energy (2) goes to CH3-OH +2 1/2 O2

And all the CO2 you start with still gets released to the atmosphere if the methanol is used as a fuel, plus the addition of all the CO2 used in the chemical processes and compression. The heating value of methanol is only about half that of gasoline, after all, half its weight is already oxygen.

When you have CO2 and water you are at the bottom of the hill. Any way you go is uphill.

Plants make fuel out of CO2 using sunlight as the energy source but quite inefficiently. The plants are interested in growing and reproducing, not making fuel.

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May, 05 2011

Don Hirschberg says

I posted a comment on 4/26 (it’s now 5/5) and there have been no additional comments since. While about 800 have visited this site I seem to have provoked no one. Either Pulsers don’t know enough to comment or they don’t give a damn. Which is it? Co2 is an important issue.

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May, 16 2013

Clair Jones says

Thank you for posting this interesting and great article. welding training

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