Utsira formation

At the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea off Norway, natural gas is produced containing about 10 percent C02. The C02 concentration exceeds the concentration allowed in the European natural gas grid by about a factor of 4. Normally in such cases, C02 is stripped from the gas onshore and vented to the atmosphere. Since 1996, motivated by a carbon tax of about 140/t C (in U.S. dollars), the field operators are stripping C02 offshore and injecting it into the nearby Utsira formation, a very large saline aquifer that does not contain hydrocarbons. 

In addition, the Norwegian oil company, Statoil, is injecting approximately 1 million ton per year of recovered COz into the Utsira Sand, a saline formation... 

The world s first industrial-scale CO2 storage was at Norway s Sleipner gas field in the North Sea, where about one million tons per year of compressed liquid CO2 separated from methane is injected into a deep reservoir (saline aquifer) about a kilometer below the sea bed and remains safely in place. The natural gas contains 9% CO2 which must be reduced before sale or export. The overall Utsira sandstone formation there, about 1 km below the sea bed, is said to be capable of storing 600 billion tons of CO2. 

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