See: http://numero57.net/?p=254

I already feel bad enough about the mistake, but as mitigation I’d like to point out that the press release you yourself linked to (BP site) makes the following claim:

The project would also permanently store 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of removing 300,000 cars from the roads.

It makes no mention of the 1.3 million tonnes being a per annum figure. Clearly if it had done, then I would have come to rather different conclusions.

Could I also point out, though I suspect it’s going to get lost amidst the corrections and recriminations, that in my view the heart of the above calculations is the “carbon per barrel” figure (317kg) which I believe is a very useful reference number.

Sadly that’ll end up overshadowed by my error in scaling (which is really only a reproduction of BPs error, but I doubt it’ll be seen that way).

http://timworstall.com/2008/03/20/dear-mr-bliss/

Using current cost and technology projections (which need a lot of proving), it appears that when combined with a strategy of minimizing coal use in general through efficiency, renewables, etc., it is not too expensive. We had not looked at the lifecycle impacts of EOR in our studies simply because it is not applicable in nearby geology in our part of the world (southeast USA).

So far, we have not found any subtle-but-large problems from a lifecycle analysis point of view for non-EOR CCS. It is expensive, and it sustains (for a while) damaging coal mining practices.

But we are working in a political climate where 8 or 9 cent per kWh wind is “too expensive” and 11 or 12 cent per kWh nuclear “protects the public’s pocket book.” The surreal rules in this age of vaporific rhetoric.

The lesson from your analysis and recent papers on biofuels is that solving our energy and global warming problems requires solutions that are on a scale that their side effects can be enormous. This is so contrary to our cultural understanding of how to solve these sorts of problems.

We developed those cultural habits in the pre-globalization era. In those times, it was possible to find a place to absorb the impacts of our adjustment to new environment and resource externalities. (Jarred Diamond’s Collapse discusses this.) Now we find the waste chute turned upon ourselves in a sense and need to be a bit more aware of what it may bring.

Thanks to you and Monbiot for bringing this to our attention.

But credit where it’s due; check out this absolutely superb piece about climate change and greenwash he did for From Our Own Correspondent

Now it’s gone.

It was taken down out of courtesy and not for any sinister reason.

It’s not very controversial, but those who see conspiracy theories everywhere will get a full explanation by email if they so desire.

Oh, and it was a joint project; BP doing the fossils, the power being bought by everyone’s favourite green electricity hoodwinker Scottish & Southern Energy.

Well done for doing the maths, Jim. even though this project was scrapped, it makes it easier to ask the same question of all prospective CCS plans.

Let’s say this project went ahead and was responsible for the production of an additional 40 million barrels of oil above and beyond what the field would otherwise have yielded. That leads to over 12.5 million tonnes of CO2 being emitted as we’ve seen above.

Now BP claim the project will capture 1.3 million tonnes, and that this is equivalent to “taking 300,000 cars off the road”. Well, if that’s true, and the net emissions of the project are 11.2 million tonnes of CO2 (12.5 – 1.3) then BP will be responsible for “putting 2.5 million cars on the road”.

Anyone concerned about carbon emissions will have been dismayed by the recent announcement of “the world’s cheapest car” in India. The article makes grim reading when it quotes the car’s manufacturer speculating about selling a million units of his new model.

Yet at the same time BP is proposing a single power station that will have 2 and a half times the impact, and is somehow labelling it an “industrial-scale decarbonized fuels project”.