December 15, 2009 (UW). Four industry partners are supporting a $16.9 million University of Wyoming (UW) project to provide geologic site characterization for commercial-scale carbon sequestration in southwestern Wyoming. Three partners -- Baker Hughes, Inc., EMTEK Energy and Geokinetics -- are contributing about $4.3 million in critical services, including geophysical site surveys and well design, drilling and logging, says project director Carol Frost, the university's associate vice president for research and economic development. A fourth partner, ExxonMobil Corp., is sharing data and lessons learned from its carbon dioxide injection activities at Shute Creek.

The deep saline aquifers in the Rock Springs Uplift (RSU) and the Moxa Arch, located adjacent to several of the state's largest sources of anthropogenic carbon dioxide -- including two power plants that annually produce nearly 40 percent of the state's emissions, and ExxonMobil's gas processing plant -- represent the state's most promising targets for sequestration.

According to preliminary data from UW and the Wyoming State Geological Survey, the two geologic structures are capable of storing Wyoming's current carbon dioxide emissions for many centuries, says project director, Carol Frost.

"Wyoming supplies 10 percent of our nation's energy, and 70 percent of that energy supplied from coal, which releases more carbon dioxide per unit energy than oil or gas," Frost says. "Geologic sequestration is essential to continued use of this major domestic energy source while making progress toward meeting President Obama's energy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Read the full article here.