This morning I think I got a brief idea of what into the lion's den means. Ed Helminski who raises the Annual US CCUS conference asked me to give my views on CO2 utilisation to the Conference in a key note address to delegates. The main points I tried to make were: that utilisation must involve permanent storage of CO2 whereas in my view most of the uses are temporary storage only. I also made the point that apart from CO2-EOR there was no significant market for the utilisation products the developers were producing. For CO2-EOR I believe that this is not permanent storage as there is some emissions leakage due to the energy used to recycle and reinject the CO2. Also I questioned whether CO2-EOR was not really merely transferring emissions from the energy to the transport sector where global emissions are steadily increasing and we have to look at the whole picture and not just one sector.

However I did commend CO2-EOR as a game changer as it is helping to finance demonstration projects in some parts of the world which will help build confidence in CCS which is essential to move the technology to broader implementation.

The audience's response was tempered but I did get a couple of questions on price of carbon under the ETS and why CO2-EOR was unlikely in the EU. At the tea break a few oil industry people politely tried to put me rjosirt that oil demand was statis not rising and CO2-EOR oil displaces hjosirer carbon oil. Sorry still don't buy these arguments. CO2-EOR in my mind is a temporary measure and we need to get back to CCS soon.