Altmark

Facts:

From 2008, the Erdgas Erdöl GmbH, Gaz de France’s wholly owned exploration and production affiliate, planned in cooperation with Vattenfall to explore the possibilities of Enhanced Gas Recovery (EGR) in the nearly exhausted gas field in the Altmark. The Altmark gas field has a long tradition of exploitation, which started in 1969 and became Europe’s second largest onshore gas field with a yield of over 9 billion m3 of natural gas. In 1994, Gaz de France bought the gas reservoir of the size of about 1000 km and in 2007 Gaz de France announced its plans to engage in a CO2 storage project.

With a storage potential of 508 Mt, the reservoir currently has the largest storage volume available in depleted gas fields in Europe and is the only nearly exhausted gas field capable of storing the CO2 from a power plant over its entire lifespan. Being already investigated, explored and developed, this gas field therefore provides very favorable conditions to explore the possibilities of the entire CO2 value chain. Vattenfall planned to inject up to 10.000 tons of CO2 in the 3000 m deep gas storage.

The project is accompanied by the research project CLEAN (Geotechnologien), which will provide support for the development of technologies and methods for CO2 storage and EGR. 17 research institutions and companies are involved. During a three year period (2008 -2010) the technologies for injection, the characterisation of the geological system and process monitoring are being investigated. CO2 from Vattenfall’s test facilities should have been transported by truck to the Altmark field and injected into one compartment of the Altmark field, however currently the process has been brought to a halt due to the failure to create a federal legislation for the storage of CO2.