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CLIMIT-Forskning, utvikling og demo av CO2-håndtering

ECO-BASE: Establishing CO2 enhanced Oil recovery Business Advantages in South Eastern Europe

Awarded: NOK 4.8 mill.

CO2 storage is essential in keeping global warming below the 2 degrees C target set by COP22. Storage in combination with commercial utilization (called CCUS - Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage) is a potential avenue to make CO2 storage into a business opportunity. Enhanced Oil Recovery by CO2 injection (CO2-EOR) is currently the only process capable of continuously utilizing and storing large CO2 volumes. The technology create business cases, and allows to compensate for all CO2 emissions from hydrocarbons produced. ECO-BASE looks at large scale CCUS deployment in South-Eastern Europe (SEE) in view of developing business models and opportunities for CO2-EOR. The project is carried out locally in the SEE countries Turkey, Romania and Greece with support from TNO (The Netherlands) and IRIS (Norway). Focus will be on economic optimization of the CO2-EOR combined with permanent storage in a comprehensive process called EORStore. Four key activities represented by sub-projects are: 1. Map CCUS potential in SEE and establish regional EORStore roadmaps. The sub-project will identify the most promising case studies as input for sub-project 2. 2. Create business opportunities for selected EORStore cases. The objectives are to model and optimize EORStore, and identify technical, legal and regulatory incentives and bottle necks. The sub-project will deliver site specific reports; passing on more generalized lessons learned and pointing out the way forward. 3. Knowledge sharing and transfer between North West Europe (NWE) and SEE (and beyond) to boost and support CCUS activities in participating countries. The sub-project will organize courses for young people with relevant background and arrange knowledge transfer to various stakeholders in the CCUS community. An attempt will also be made to involve other countries in the Black Sea region (Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Russia). 4. Public awareness and acceptance. It is crucial to establish goodwill for CCUS development among all who may be affected. Similar projects have previously failed because of "total lack of local support". The ECO-BASE is aiming at liaising with existing organizations (like CO2-GeoNet) and projects (such as ENOS H2020 or other ACT projects) to increase public understanding, appreciation and acceptance of EORStore. The project completed with evaluating two clusters (one in Romania and one in Turkey), providing first evaluation of techno-economic analysis for them, identifying key bottlenecks and discussing the way forward. Public opinion poll was carried out using social media, media analysis for coverage of ccus activities was carried out, public engagement plan for further clusters development was prepared. Stakeholders were identified and engaged, the concept and the draft of the next stage cluster development proposal was prepared.

Project activities contributed to the knowledge transfer from Norway and Netherlands to Romania and Turkey. 3 educational workshops were held. Twice in collaboration with Sotacarbo - a CO2EOR+Storage workshop organised during the Sotacarbo summer school (third planned event canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19). CO2EOR summer school was co-organized with METU as an online event in September 2020. Seminar on legal and regulatory framework of CO2 EOR and Storage was carried out in Bucharest, Romania in September 2019. Several meetings with the stakeholders both in Turkey and Romania were held. Two industrial partners from Romania (cement factory and independent oil operator) and one from Turkey (refinery) confirmed they interest and will to participate in further pilot preparation activities. A draft of the pilot preparation project proposal was prepared. Consortia is currently looking for fitting financing possibility.

CO2 storage is essential for reaching the below 2C target. Commercial utilization of CO2 is one of mechanisms to create a business case for the CO2 storage and CO2-EOR is the only process capable of continuously utilizing and later storing large CO2 volumes. ECO-BASE will develop revenue streams and business models for CO2-EOR in South-Eastern Europe (SEE) therefore supporting large scale CCUS deployment. The project is carried out locally in SEE countries: Turkey, Romania and Greece with support from TNO, the Netherlands and IRIS, Norway. The project team will access the whole revenue stream and focus on optimization of the CO2-EOR combined with permanent storage (EORStore) as an undividable process. Four key activities represented by sub-projects are: 1. Map CCUS potential in SEE and establish regional EORStore roadmaps. The sub-project will identify most promising case studies as input for sub-project 2. 2. Creating a business case for selected EORStore case studies. The objectives are to model and optimize EORStore, access technical, legal and regulatory incentives and bottle necks. Sub-project will deliver site specific reports for further actions and identify more generalized lessons learned. 3. Knowledge sharing and transfer between North West Europe (NWE) and SEE and beyond to boost and support CCUS activities in participating countries. Sub-project will organize courses for young specialists; arrange knowledge transfer to various stakeholders of CCUS community. An attempt to involve other countries of the Black Sea region (Bulgaria, Ukraine, Georgia, Russia) would be made. 4. Public awareness and acceptance. Creating favorable atmosphere for CCUS development among all stakeholders is crucial-there were projects stopped or cancelled due to "total lack of local support". The ECO-BASE is aiming at liaising with existing organisations (like CO2-GeoNet) and projects (like ENOS) in order to organise public events and raise awareness and acceptance of EORStore.

Funding scheme:

CLIMIT-Forskning, utvikling og demo av CO2-håndtering