Removing Carbon from the Energy Cycle

Data from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report 2022, highlights that over 80% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (in 2019) came either directly or indirectly from an oil and gas source.

If the global oil & gas industry decarbonises their oil and gas production at source, and the geothermal industry couples with agriculture and biowaste industries to work in synergy, we could potentially generate a rapid reduction of over 60% in greenhouse gas emissions through carbon capture and storage (CCS). During oil and gas reformation the wellbore reactions generate hydrogen with CO₂, which is immediately captured, avoiding its future emissions to the atmosphere, and money is saved by not requiring the future CCS for this same carbon.

The CO₂ captured would not only come from these wellbore reformation reactions, as it would also come from the CO₂ content held within biogas. For enhanced CCS externally sourced CO₂ could also be imported and injected into the wells from surface, increasing the overall CO₂ volumes captured.

[Ref.: Figure SPM.1 (a) from IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926.001]

A short IPCC presentation can be viewed here.

HydroCARBON

It is far better for climate and economy (and national or corporate PR) if the carbon in the oil and gas is removed at-source and simultaneously stored downhole, while producing the hydrogen (H₂) to surface. This decarbonisation-at-source has an immediate positive impact on climate, with the immediate reduction of carbon footprint.

When the carbon in oil and gas production is removed at source there will rapidly develop a scaling of the hydrogen economy, which leads to.

• zero natural gas (CH₄) or carbon dioxide (CO₂) transmission losses – potent Greenhouse Gases (GHG).
• transitioning to hydrogen as the power source will quickly reduce the complex mixture of oil and gas end users (e.g., transportation, industry, domestic) to zero.
• zero industrial CH₄ end users – each with their own individual carbon capture & storage (CCS) technical complexities and cost.
  This will result in a significant reduction in the requirement for numerous, costly downstream CCS facilities, each with their own additional process energy requirements for the capture of CO₂, together with the compression, temporary storage and transportation if the CO₂ to the final storage and/or disposal points.
• zero domestic CH₄ or petrol use – which leads to the elimination of this previously non-capturable CO₂ generation from the power network and energy chain.

The figures below give simplified illustrations of two similar processes, one for natural gas wellbores and one for biogas utilisation within onshore geothermal wellbores. Both remove carbon downhole while generating hydrogen.

For the Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) the geothermal wellbores capture the hot carbon waste stream and inject it, eliminating thermal depletion of the geothermal reservoir. Over time, some of the injected carbon will appear in the power fluid production stream, also improving its thermal capacity.