SASOL and CCS

Carbon capture and storage is one of the major themes of Climate Change and the Minerals Industry ’11, so it was interesting to read in today’s Cape Times that SASOL, who has always been a supporter of MEI Conferences, is to sign an expensive deal today to buy into the Norwegian government’s international BIGCCS carbon capture and research centre. The company will thereby be demonstrating a large commitment to CCS, even as the South African government expresses reluctance to pay for cutting carbon emissions to tackle climate change.

Norway is already capturing and storing carbon dioxide in the seabed shelves from which it extracted oil and gas. Norway believes that with its oil-from-coal expertise, SASOL can make a valuable contribution to CCS research.