United States Department of Energy & the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy

Bilateral meeting on CCUS, Washington, USA, 28-30th August 2017

Meeting Notes

Prelude

Delegates from the United States of America (USA) and Norway met in Washington, USA, on 28-30th August 2017 to present activities and achievements since May 2016 under the US-Norway bilateral agreement on collaboration within the subject of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) and to discuss plans for the next 12 months. After welcome to the meeting by Kimberly Rasar, Office of Fossil Fuel Energy, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), an overview of the meeting was given by Richard Lynch, Office of Fossil Energy, (DOE), followed by a short introduction on the objectives of the meeting by Jostein Dahl Karlsen, Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE).

The meeting host, Hunton & Williams LLP, represented  by Fred Earmes, welcomed and introduced the meeting. He explained his company's involvement in CCUS and was optimistic about future private engagement. The national US and Norway's priorities for CCUS were presented by Jarad Daniels, (DOE) and William Christensen, MPE, respectively. Jarad Daniels emphasized the importance of public, private partnership to bring CCUS forward. Further prioritization will be on how to bring forward transformational technology development. William Christensen focused on the Norwegian strategy on CCS from industrial sources and the plan for large scale employment in Norway by shared risk on government and industry.

Plenary Sessions

The meeting was rich in content. The agenda and the plenary presentations can be found here. Incentives and business models for implementing CCUS were presented and discussed, including the Southern Company's Storage initiative and Statoil's business models for CO2 storage. Tom Russial summarized the Carbon Utilization Research Council's (CCURC) work on approaches for international collaboration and financing of CCUS pilots. The session concluded with a discussion moderated by Bjørn-Erik Haugan, Gassnova.

The section on Technical opportunities and Joint interest included presentations on opportunities for research collaboration on crosscutting issues, possible areas of interest for CO2 utilisation, as well as  an update on Cross-Border Transportation dealing with offshore transport and the London.

At the end of the first day the group was divided into two parallel groups dealing with Large-Scale Testing of Carbon Capture Technologies (including crosscutting technologies) and CO2 Storage / EOR (including crosscutting technologies). The agendas for and the presentations at the breakout sessions can be found here (Capture) and here (storage).

The second day of the meeting had plenary sessions  on Offshore Geological CO2 Sequestration, Small-Scale Carbon Capture and Communication, as well as read-outs from the breakout sessions the previous day.  The main outcome of the meeting can be found below and in the presentations from the breakout sessions..

Site visits

Due to the storm in Texas, the planned site visits to Petra Nova post combustion plant and Net Power oxyfuel pilot, both near Houston, Texas, were cancelled. Thorough introductions and insights into the projects were given over Skype. The meeting attendees very much appreciated the informative presentations since site visits had to be cancelled.

Workshop on Novel Business Models for CCS and CCUS

A one day workshop on business models, planned to take place in Austin, Texas, the day after the site visits, were instead held on theHunton & Williams premises in Washington the day following the bilateral meeting. The US and Norwegian delegates are highly appreciative of the generosity and flexibility of Hunton & Williams LLP to accommodate the workshop.

Agenda, presentations and outcomes of the workshop can be found here.

Outcomes of the meeting

Organization of the bilateral cooperation

The continued bilateral cooperation will focus on two areas: 1. Capture and 2. Storage/EOR. This includes large scale activities, as well as R&D collaboration. It also includes what is DOE crosscutting activities that are relevant for capture and storage. A new potential area, CO2 utilization was also discussed, and will be dealt with under the capture activity.

It was also decided that communication should be a subject to be discussed under the bilateral meetings, but not as a separate working group. The main objective will be to be coordinated on messages, learn from each other and work together and take lead in communication activities delivered under CSLF.

Important lessons learnt

Several areas from the break out sessions of common interest were presented at the plenary session under the bilateral meeting.

Large-Scale Testing of Carbon Capture Technologies (including crosscutting technologies)

Presentations given at the Large-Scale Testing of Carbon Capture Technologies (including crosscutting technologies) break-out session can be found here, including the summary outcome that was presented the second day at the plenary meeting.

Several ongoing mutual activities were reviewed at the break-out session Large-Scale Testing of Carbon Capture Technologies (including crosscutting technologies). The US-Norway cooperation has expanded to include TCM, NCCC and research institutions and academia. There are activities co-funded under the CLIMIT program and DOE, Large scale testing at TCM (Technology Centre Mongstad), researcher exchange and common workshops and meetings on Modular technologies, CLIMIT Transformational workshop and DOE/NETL capture meeting. In addition there have been Test Center Network Meetings.

There are currently in progress new activities on large scale testing. Initiatives on collaboration on the Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI) are also in progress between NETL, TCM and SINTEF. Other future and continued activities are knowledge sharing on industrial sources and capture and modularization of capture systems. In addition it was discussed how to collaborate on transformational capture technologies. Funding opportunities announcements can be found through DOE's and CLIMITs announcements.

Lessons learnt and how future cooperation could be improved was also discussed.  This includes among others contract negotiation, IPR, reporting, cost share. An important action is shared information about funding opportunities. Other future opportunities that were presented and discussed was:

·       ACT CCS funding opportunity collaboration

·       Assessment of modular CCS opportunities

·       Norwegian CCS Research Center (NCCS) – bi-lateral activities

·       Carbon Utilization – LCA workshop in October, business case assessments

CO2 storage and EOR (including crosscutting technologies)

Presentations given at the CO2 storage and EOR (including crosscutting technologies) break-out session can be found here, including the summary outcome that was presented the second day at the plenary meeting.

Ongoing collaboration activities were reviewed at the break-out CO2 Storage and EOR (including crosscutting technologies). The US-Norway cooperation in this area includes the CO2 Storage Data Consortium (CSDC), monitoring and well integrity atlas, EOR using CO2 foam, and microseismicity and seismic profiling. The general presentations also included the Norwegian full-scale project, status on two Norwegian CO2-EOR-related projects, the CSLF Task Force on Offshore CO2-EOR, DoE and CLIMIT awards, IRIS storage-related projects, storage activities under the Norwegian CCS Research Centre (NCCS, the DoE funded initiative National Risk Assessment Partnership (NRAP), as well as funding possibilities under the European ACT initiative . The following presentations also have the potential for new collaborative activities:

·       University of Bergen – EOR with CO2 foam pilot tests.

·       Mississippi Power Kemper County IGCC – CarbonSAFE saline storage project

·       Outcomes for the 2nd International Workshop on Offshore Geologic CO2 Storage Workshop in Beaumont, Texas, June 19-21, 2017. Offshore CO2 geologic storage and CO2-EOR were particularly mentioned.

Next meeting

The next bilateral meeting will be in Norway in the beginning of May 2018