Headline, April 16 2024/ EXCELLENCE : ''' ENI ITALY'S ERA '''

EXCELLENCE : 

''' ENI ITALY'S ERA '''

'' THIS IS AN ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITY FOR ITALY. '' Italian energy giant ENI sees future profits from storing carbon dioxide. A plan to stash pollution under the seabed.

The company is proposing to construct a network of pipelines to sweep up the carbon dioxide from the sites and store it away in old natural gas reservoirs.

It sees this process known as carbon capture and storage, as a promising new business line that would aid its shift to cleaner activities.

Eni is working on similar plans elsewhere in Europe, notably in Britain, where many mature oil and gas fields offer large volumes of storage potential.

There are other carbon capture projects around the world, including in the United States, often aimed at reducing emissions from oil and natural gas production.

The company wants to diversify away from oil and gas sales that have long been its mainstay, but it faces an uncertain future because of climate change concerns.

Eni executives calculate they will have an edge because they can make use of the company's existing infrastructure like wells and pipelines and redeploy employees.

'' It's very easy to reskill or shift people,''  said Claudio Descalzi, Eni's chief executive. Mr. Descalzi plans to turn carbon capture into a ''satellite'' company that could attract other investors seeking profits that he forecasts could be about 10 percent a year.

The transition to cleaner energy will succeed only if it spawns sustainable businesses, he said. '' Otherwise, it will fail,'' he added. '' Because resources are limited and you can't burn money.''

Eni has about 50 operating petroleum platforms in the Adriatic Sea off Ravena, beyond lagoons dotted with flamingos.

With production falling, Eni plans to pump carbon dioxide into the depleted gas reservoirs, which will act as giant sponges for the waste gas.

The company is spending about 100 million euros on modifications designed to remove about half the carbon dioxide emanating from a gas processing plant in nearby Casalborsetti.

Work is largely complete, and Eni plans to begin sending the carbon dioxide through a new well into a gas field about 12 miles [ 19 kilometres ] offshore and 10,000 feet [ 3,000 meters ] below the seabed soon.

If this first phase goes smoothly, ENI will move to a much larger plan, initially costing as much as  Euro 1.5 billion, that will hook up factories and other large polluters in Italy and perhaps even France, to eventually draw as much as 16 million tons of carbon dioxide a year for burial.

Just as oil experts use powerful computers to crunch data into three-dimensional images to figure out how to efficiently extract gas from the ground, they are now using similar techniques to model how to safely inject carbon dioxide into porous rock.

Launching carbon capture projects, though, is proving a grind - an indication of how challenging the energy transition may be as countries shift from some of the easier areas to clean up, like electric power, to more difficult sectors like cement and steel.

Carbon capture needs to account for 8 percent of cumulative emissions reductions if the world is to achieve net zero by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization.

Yet to be on track, the volume of stored carbon dioxide needs to jump twentyfold by 2030, to one billion tons a year - '' a very ambitious undertaking'' said Carl Greenfield, an analyst at the agency.

Polluters are struggling to evaluate whether it is worthwhile spending tens or even hundreds of millions to retrofit their plants.

'' They don't have even the expertise to understand which is the best technology,'' said Guido Brusico, ENI's chief operating officer of natural resources.

Even some environmental groups are inclined to give carbon capture a lukewarm pass as long as it is not a means of prolonging the use of fossil fuels.

'' If CO2 release to the atmosphere is otherwise inevitable from an industrial installation, then it is better to capture it,'' said Doug Parr, chief scientist of Greenpeace U.K.

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