The 2018 meeting for the "US-Norway Collaboration on CCS/CCUS" was on 2 May in Oslo. For the first time it was open to observers, inviting those attending the Offshore CCS Workshop which starts the following day (which we are involved in). It was interesting to get sight of the collaborations between these two countries which both have great CCUS R&D programmes. William Christensen, Director General of the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and Steve Winberg, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy (US) opened the day. Updates were given on projects and funding opportunities from both countries, including the current assessment of CarbonSAFE phase 2 proposals in the USA where they hope to fund 3 more projects. The morning was divided into two parallel sessions, one on storage and one on capture.


Activities in the storage area highlighted as collaborations underway included CO2 Data Share (which will be the subject of an IEAGHG webinar on 24 May and IEAGHG is on the Advisory Panel), passive and active seismic data assessment from the Decatur project, work on geomechanical and geochemical near-wellbore issues, a CO2 Well Integrity Atlas, and CO2 Foam EOR pilot tests in Texas.


Areas with potential for new collaborations were highlighted in the new offshore Gulf of Mexico projects, and the Norwegian CCS Research Centre (which is hosting the IEAGHG Summer School this June). There was an interesting discussion on the extension of the US tax credit for CCUS, '45Q', and its ability to be transferred as well as its higher values and no cap meaning it has stimulated a lot of new interest in projects.


In the capture area tests at TCM, Norcem and Tiller facilities were mentioned. Areas for potential collaboration included capturing from variable flue gases, capturing at lower rates, advanced manufacturing, and advanced computational tools such as CCSI2.


It was also announced that the US will join ACT, the EU programme to encourage collaboration between national projects.


An interesting day, there is more US-Norway collaboration than I had realised, and both have excellent research facilities to share, as well as data from large-scale storage projects which will be made available to the rest of the world through CO2 Data Share.


For more information see http://www.us-norway-ccus.com/ .