The CCS parallel universe

Sometimes, I cannot prevent the feeling that the CO₂ storage business is not so much about putting CO₂ in the ground, but rather to keep an en­tire academic research community, a conference industry, and a contingent of geoscientists in a job.

When it comes to academia, I see professors winning grants to do research that they previously funded through sponsorship from oil com­panies. Now, they carry on basically doing the same thing through a CO₂ storage potential justification. It also begs the question of how independ­ent and innovative academia actually is these days. All this research seems rather like following the money.

Is academia to blame for that? I don’t think so. In my eyes, the blame is the decline in public funding with­out any strings attached. As a socie­ty, we have to put back some trust in researchers to come up with genuine research topics, even ones where we don’t see the immediate benefit.

In the other parallel world, there are the fancy conference rooms and students with poster tubes around their shoulders, all hoping for a future in which they will earn their pennies on the back of projects that ultimately go ahead

Then on to the events indus­try. Every well-respected society has started to put CO₂ storage events, webinars, talks, you name it, on the agenda. Especially since many of the traditional oil industry exhibitions have decreased in size, I am quite sure that professional societies see the CO₂ storage sector as a way to compensate for the loss in revenue now that SLB doesn’t buy the multi-story stands at conferences any longer. Except maybe at ADIPEC.

But, I also see a certain fatigue in the CCS events creeping in. And that is no surprise; how long can you sustain holding talks without there being a new tangible project to report on? A telling comment along those lines came from Michael Larsen, who works on the Greensand project offshore Denmark for Ineos, at the EAGE GET Conference in Rotterdam late last year: “In 2009 we were all talking about Sleiper. In 2025, we still are.” And we all know why that is.

There are many geoscientists who have capitalised on the wave of CO₂ storage plans in recent years. That came at the right time, as so many traditional oil and gas jobs seem to have been lost. I remember hearing a colleague say, “I have extracted car­bon for all my career, now it is time to put it back”. He has now retired, and even though he spent a fair few years in the CCS business, not a single tonne was injected whilst he was there.

Two parallel universes have thus been created; one in which people continue to work on supplying the world with grey but useful ener­gy. People who are often silent on social media. In the other parallel world, there are the fancy conference rooms filled with business leaders who keep on saying that collaboration is needed and progress is being made. Students with poster tubes around their shoulders, hoping for a future in which they will earn their pennies on the back of projects that ultimately go ahead. But the reality so far seems a lot more stubborn.

I do think that we are already on our way back to more realism, though. The industry has become more vocal about what its ultimate core business is, whether you want it or not. That does not mean that CCS should be abandoned al­together, but I hope that the hype will wear off a bit.