North Dakota #1 in Future of Carbon Capture and Storage?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has to do with sequestering (capturing) carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing it somewhere. According to Wikipedia (which is as good a source as anything else, I guess), there are four industrial-scale storage projects in operation worldwide:

• Sleipner, North Sea, Norway, StatoilHydro, oldest (started in 1996)
• Snøhvit, Barents Sea, Norway, Statoil, development plan in 2001
• Salah, Algeria, "will be"
• Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project, southeastern Saskatchewan, 2000, world's largest

The Weyburn oil reservoir was discovered in 1954, and the CCS project was started in 2000, and is now the world's largest CCS project. The CO2 for this project is captured at the Dakota Gasification Company plant in Beulah, North Dakota, which has produced methane from coal for more than 30 years. At Weyburn, the CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) with an injection rate of about 1.5 million tons per year. The first phase finished in 2004, and demonstrated that CO2 can be stored underground at the site safely and indefinitely. The second phase, expected to last until 2009, is investigating how the technology can be expanded on a larger scale.

The science behind the claim that man-made CO2 production is causing global warming has been debunked but that's another story for another time. But if you say anything long enough and loud enough, it eventually becomes the truth. Or at least it becomes the truth for those who subscribe to the New York Times newspaper.

For more on current thoughts of fracking and EOR, click here. 

I guess North Dakota can soon add CSS to its list of "number one's," along with durum wheat, ICBMs, long-range bombers, and honey production.