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After spinning its wheels for years, it seems as though carbon capture and storage (CCS) is finally gaining some traction, both internationally and domestically.

Just this week, Norway announced ambitious plans to use all phases of CCS technology to capture carbon emissions from three industrial plants (cement, ammonia fertilizer and waste incinerator), transport the CO2 via ship and pipeline to the North Sea and store it in an empty oil and gas reservoir.

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The cost? About US$1.5 billion by 2022. This from a country that almost dropped CCS in 2013, likening the cost of large-scale CCS projects to sending people to the Moon.

Closer to home, the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC) signed an agreement this week to share its knowledge about CCS with the CO2 Commonwealth Research Centre in Australia. The main attraction is the PTRC’s Aquistore project, which is the first large-scale storage facility attached to a commercial CCS plant, which can monitor and track the CO2 ”plume” as it expands throughout the deep geological formation. “The whole idea here is to help other (CCS) projects to be more economical, so that CCS technology can be advanced,” says PTRC CEO Ken From.