A fascinating development that may impact our region.
An excerpt.
Team hopes to drill its way to global warming solution
Scientists want to see if keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by injecting it deep under California's Central Valley is feasible.
By Janet WilsonTimes Staff WriterOctober 25, 2006
THORNTON, Calif. — Surrounded by cornfields and cows, this gas-and-go exit off Interstate 5 south of Sacramento seems an unlikely place to solve global warming.
But for months, researchers have been quietly negotiating with a local farming family to bury carbon dioxide — the world's leading greenhouse gas — below their tomato fields northeast of town. The experiment will test whether carbon dioxide produced by power plants could be pumped deep underground to keep it from venting into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.
"I think it's a grand idea; you don't know if something will work until you try it," said Edward Lopes, 67, one of six siblings who will sit down this week to decide whether to allow the experiment beneath their fields.
"I'm all for it, but if the others aren't interested, that's fine."
Scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory say they zeroed in on this tiny delta town halfway between Stockton and Sacramento because it sits atop one of the largest natural underground gas storage sites in North America.
Seventy million years ago, an ancient inland sea created a dome of hard rock, forming an underground cap over porous, briny sandstone that could absorb several billion tons of gas, according to project scientists.
"There are geologic formations in the Central Valley that have enormous potential. We could potentially sequester several hundred years' worth of California's carbon dioxide there," said Larry Myer, head of the research team. The team is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the California Energy Commission, five other Western states, and a private natural gas company that hopes to flush lucrative methane from the earth as the carbon dioxide is buried.
If all goes as planned, hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 eventually could be siphoned from power plants and shipped via pipeline for burial under the Central Valley in a process known as carbon capture and sequestration, Myer said.
The strategy has been identified by a U.N. panel on climate change as a major option for slowing global warming. The U.S. leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions, putting 7 billion tons annually into the atmosphere. Nearly 40% comes from power plants that provide the nation's electricity.
Using carbon capture and sequestration, energy experts say, Americans could continue to power their lifestyle with plentiful coal while keeping greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere.
California could emerge as a leader in the push to put carbon dioxide underground because of its recently enacted greenhouse gas legislation, which sets mandatory caps on carbon dioxide by 2012.
But some residents of Thornton, population 1,450, are wary. "You may think we're a bunch of hicks, but we have a lot of concerns," longtime resident Christine Lagoda said. Those worries include the possibility of potentially deadly leaks and noise and pollution from trucks hauling pressurized gas 24 hours a day.
The issues in Thornton demonstrate the struggles that lie ahead as strategies for halting global warming move from laboratories into the real world.
There are nagging questions about how CO2 moves underground, confusing case law about who owns the subterranean sediments where gas would be stored, and uncertainty about long-term monitoring. The high cost of capturing the gas would be borne by consumers.
Mostly though, Thornton residents wonder, why here? They were angry when word got out last month that university researchers were looking at their town as a place to experiment with greenhouse gas. No public hearings had been announced, no county permit applications filed.
Not even the fire chief was informed. "I think something should be done about global warming … but you have to weigh the cure, whether it's worse," said Marlene Corbitt, a software consultant and Chamber of Commerce vice president, when she got the news. "I wouldn't want to be sitting on top of the gas."
Researchers have called that reaction NUMBY, or "Not Under My Backyard."
But the Berkeley team insists that the experiment is safe. Members say that unlike fault-prone coastal or volcanic mountain areas, the area's sediments are stable. They say they planned all along to involve residents, but wanted to keep the site secret until a deal was finalized. After word leaked out, the team quickly scheduled a meeting at New Hope Elementary School. About 25 people showed up and watched warily as the scientists played a slide show explaining the experiment.
Two wells would be drilled about 150 feet apart, the scientists said, and 4,000 pounds of carbon dioxide pumped three-quarters of a mile below the surface. Researchers would monitor the CO2 for a few months to see how it moved, then would cap the wells and walk away.
Residents peppered the team with questions. "So you can't guarantee that it's going to be leakproof?" "How does it affect the water table?" "Is this kind of like a landfill underground?"
The researchers and a Rosetta Resources manager tried to allay residents' fears, explaining that CO2 is not explosive and that drinking water should not be affected. Monitoring would be done during injection, they said. After the experiment, there would be well-heads left behind in Thornton, but not much else….
…Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground for decades by energy companies in Canada, Texas and elsewhere to force out stubborn oil deposits. But in most cases, companies haven't worried about whether the gas stayed put. Rosetta Resources, which put up $1 million of the project's $5-million tab, hopes CO2 buried in Thornton also could be used to flush out currently inaccessible natural gas, which maps show lies in the Thornton Reserve. Though carbon sequestration technology is widely regarded as safe, there are questions about how the gas may move underground, whether it could escape by rising through abandoned oil wells, and whether over millenniums it could break down concrete seals or natural rock caps. There are no federal or state laws in place for long-term monitoring of the potentially deadly gas after it is buried.
Robert Socolow, a Princeton physicist who heads the university's Carbon Mitigation Initiative — which is funded by BP and Ford — said it was important not to downplay risks, however remote.
"The terrible way nuclear waste was presented to the public — we have a parallel there. Nuclear waste was introduced with lots of assurances that weren't true," he said. One incident that Socolow sometimes mentions occurred at Lake Nyos in West Africa's Cameroon in 1986. A huge upwelling of naturally occurring carbon dioxide from the lake bottom drifted for miles, flattening trees and suffocating 1,700 people as they slept.
