Oh Well!! Equinor Reports That Flagship Carbon Capture Project Stored Nearly 30% Less CO2 Than Claimed Over 5 Years

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Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor has admitted over-reporting the performance of a flagship carbon capture and storage project by about 28 percent due to defective monitoring equipment, underscoring risks associated with plans to scale the technology as a climate solution, DeSmog can reveal. In a footnote in its latest sustainability data, Equinor said a malfunction in equipment used to measure the amount of gas flowing through a pipeline at its Sleipner gas field in the North Sea had caused it to over-report the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) stored from 2017 to 2021.

“Due to a flawed flow transmitter at Equinor’s CO2 injection facilities at Sleipner, the figures for CO2 injected were over-reported in the period 2017-2021,” the footnote said. “The transmitter was replaced in March 2021, and the figures have been updated accordingly.” Equinor did not quantify the extent of the over-estimates in the footnote on Sleipner. The 28-year-old project is often cited by carbon capture advocates as proof that it’s technically feasible to trap and store large quantities of CO2 underground.

A DeSmog review of publicly available company data conducted in October suggests that Equinor captured and stored a cumulative total of 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 at Sleipner from 2017-2019, compared to its initial estimate of 2.1 million tonnes — implying that it had previously over-reported the amount of gas stored during that three-year period by about 30 percent. [See note on methodology at the end of this story]. At the time, a lack of comparable data made it harder to estimate how much the company may have over-estimated CO2 capture at Sleipner in 2020 and early 2021, although partial numbers suggested that the figure was also about 30 percent.

In November, DeSmog obtained more precise data from the Norwegian Environment Agency, which collates figures supplied by the oil and gas industry. Those new numbers showed that Equinor had reduced its estimate for the amount of CO2 stored from 2017 through March 2021 to 2.115 million tonnes from 2.700 million tonnes — a downward revision of 28 percent. “Based on the assessment of available data from other relevant systems, we have no indication of measurement errors before this error in 2017, and none after the faulty equipment was replaced,” said Equinor spokesman Gisle Ledel Johannessen. “The injection system has been fully operational in the entire period. As an example, the last 5 years we have injected 99,7% of the CO2 that has been captured on Sleipner into the ground.”

EDIT

https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/28/norways-equinor-admits-it-over-reported-amount-of-carbon-captured-at-flagship-project-for-years/

Ed. - And since arithmetic is both fun and instructive, remember that total stored carbon claimed by Equinor amounted to .00564% of estimated total anthropogenic CO2 output for 2024 of 37.5 billion tons. Break it out by year, and that becomes .00113% of total annual CO2 output, though that's an approximation since carbon output grows year by year.