WOOD Group has won a contract to design a giant carbon capture scheme in the Middle East that champions believe could be as good for the environment as taking one million cars off the road.

WOOD Group has won a contract to design a giant carbon capture scheme in the Middle East that champions believe could be as good for the environment as taking one million cars off the road.

The Aberdeen oil services company has been selected by the United Arab Emirates authorities to design a scheme to use waste gas from giant industrial units to boost the output from oil fields, which is reckoned to be the biggest of its kind ever undertaken.

The project will involve capturing carbon produced by a gas-fired power plant, an aluminium smelter and a steel mill and sending it via a 300-kilometre pipeline for injection into oil fields in the desert state.

The authorities hope the scheme could make a huge contribution to efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the oil and gas rich UAE while also significantly enhancing recovery rates.

Wood said around five million tons of CO2 gas per year could be captured as of 2013 from the three emission sources in phase 1. This would be equivalent to the CO2 produced by more than one million European cars. To achieve the same reduction would require the planting of 250 million trees.

If successful the scheme would also allow the UAE to stop relying on injecting natural gas into oil wells to help increase recovery rates.

While a coal-fired power plant in East Germany recently became the first to capture and store carbon, the UAE scheme is by far the biggest of its kind yet proposed.

The project forms a centre piece of the UAE's efforts to position itself as a leader in the development of clean power technologies.

Under the Masdar programme, the country proposes to invest $15bn (£10bn) in the development and commercialisation of new technologies in renewable, alternative and sustainable energies.

The results will be studied closely in Scotland where ministers have been enthusiastic about the idea of carbon capture.

The contract win is a big coup for Wood Group.

While the value of the contract was not disclosed it is believed that it will be worth millions of dollars.