Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
9/19/2014
The state government of Victoria, Australia, has pledged $5 million in funding to the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies’ (CO2CRC) continued carbon storage research project in Otway, Australia. The announcement was made during Australia’s National CCS Conference by Victoria’s Minister for Energy and Resources, Russell Northe, according to a CO2CRC press release this week. Otway’s research and development project is ongoing, and has been injecting CO2 underground into a depleted gas reservoir near Warrnambool in Victoria for 10 years. “Appropriate government policy, including funding initiatives and other enabling mechanisms, is fundamental to the successful development, demonstration and deployment of new technologies. … The Victorian Government’s additional funding means that new experiments will proceed at Otway,” CO2CRC CEO Richard Aldous said in a release following the announcement
The Otway project is Australia’s first deep geological storage demonstration project and is tasked with providing additional knowledge in the fields of carbon sequestration and technologies for monitoring and verification. The project aims to model CO2 behavior underground, demonstrate the safe storage of CO2 and provide insight into the applicability of Australia’s existing regulatory environment. More than 65,000 tonnes of CO2 has been stored at this point and is being monitored, according to a fact sheet. “Otway offers one of the most comprehensive CO2 monitoring programs of its type in the world, providing technical information on geo-sequestration processes, technologies and monitoring, as well as verification schemes,” Aldous said.
