Carbon storage safety issues

The greater the amount of carbon dioxide injected, the more will return to the surface with the methane. This creates the need for a gas-separation plant of the type shown in Figure 3.2. The removal of carbon dioxide from oil is much simpler than from methane, which is why enhanced oil recovery is practised more widely than enhanced gas recovery. With an extensive coal seam, it will be necessary to drill injection and extraction wells every few hundred metres or so. These, together with the associated gas compressors, distribution pipes and pumps, access roads, etc., will turn a rural landscape into an industrial site. When the operational/safety issues and the extent of industrialization become fully appreciated, not to mention the impact on the ecological habitat, there may well be local opposition to the recovery of coal-bed methane - with or without carbon dioxide injection and storage. 

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