Midwestern states are working with energy companies to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to carbon capture and storage, finding ways to transport the gas from its industrial source to its final resting place.

The Midwestern Governors Association last week announced a goal to site and permit by 2012 at least one interstate pipeline to ferry global warming pollution from the region's power plants to suitable underground storage sites. The goal was among several laid out in the Midwestern Energy Infrastructure Accord aiming to transform the region's coal rich states into hubs for CCS technology.

An early step in the accord involves the development of a pipeline that would move carbon dioxide from capture-ready coal plants in Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast for use in enhanced oil recovery.

Denbury Resources Inc, a Texas based oil and gas company, announced in July that it was conducting a feasibility study into a 500 mile Midwest pipeline that would link the proposed plants to the company's production fields in Mississippi. The company said it could build the estimated USD 1 billion pipeline at a profit and without government subsidies if at least three commercial scale coal gasification plants in the region supplied CO2.

Four proposed gasification facilities have signed conditional agreements to supply CO2 to the pipeline, Denbury said, including ones near Rockport and Owensboro and one each in Jefferson and Christian counties in Illinois. Each would capture between 50% and 90% of emissions.

Mr Phil Rykhoek CEO of Denbury said that "We offer these industrial users the most practical and economical way to sequester CO2. And we benefit as we will use their CO2 to further increase our domestic oil production."

(Sourced from www.nytimes.com)