THE University of Edinburgh yesterday opened a centre to research the use of carbon to retrieve oil otherwise hard to extract from reservoirs, a method that could unlock three billion barrels of trapped North Sea oil worth £190 billion.
Developers of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects have already suggested using the method, also known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that has been used in North America for decades, to enhance the economic viability of plants that are expensive to finance.
"The captured CO2 would be transported to the North Sea where it is injected into oilfields, forcing out additional oil, with the CO2 remaining permanently stored deep underground," it said in a statement.
The centre is funded by the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and CCS developer 2CO, which has already proposed using CO2-EOR in its Don Valley carbon capture project.
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