Taiwan may store carbon underground in 2010

“We have the ability to do it, from experience in exploration and production,” Kung said. Energy companies have injected carbon dioxide into oil wells to increase output, he said.

President Ma Ying-jeou, who took office last May, has pledged to cut carbon emissions to 2000 levels by 2025. Taiwan ranked 22nd in the world's carbon dioxide emissions in 2006, accounting for almost one percent, the energy bureau said on its Web site.

Taiwan has the potential to store 2.8 billion tons of carbon underground, or about 10 times the island's annual emissions, CPC said in a statement.

The company may capture carbon dioxide produced in association with oil refining and gas production, then compress and inject it through retired gas wells to be stored in pores of sand stone, Fan Chen-hui, a CPC researcher, told reporters yesterday.

CPC operates 42 oil and gas wells in Taiwan and plans to drill three this year, it said in a report to lawmakers March 16. Natural gas produced on the island accounted for about 3 percent of supplies of the fuel last year.

The company operates three oil refineries with a total daily capacity of 720,000 barrels of crude. CPC also has units that process naphtha into petrochemicals including ethylene, a raw material used in making plastics. Naphtha is distilled from crude oil.

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