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Earth

Texas oil companies will soon be locking away carbon

By Helen Knight

31 March 2010

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Piping away carbon

(Image: Denbury Resources Inc.)

THE industry most often accused of being responsible for the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is, strange as it may seem, desperate to buy more of the stuff.

Oil companies are paying industrial plants and natural gas processing facilities to bottle their waste CO2, and are then pumping it underground.

This is not an act of eco-altruism. The goal for the oil companies is to try and extract every last drop from ageing oilfields. But an incidental result is that the oil ends up with a smaller net carbon footprint than…

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