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Monitoring
Monitoring and verifying the quantities of CO2 stored is essential if CO2 storage is to be used to meet national or international commitments on reducing emissions or as a basis for emissions trading. Any CO2 storage options would also need to verify that there is no leakage of CO2 from the storage reservoir.
During CO2 capture flows of gas would be measured as a normal part of the capture process. In a similar fashion large CO2 pipelines in the USA constantly monitor large quantities of CO2 and similar methods could be used to monitor CO2 injected into geological storage sites.
Oil and gas companies now have the technology to trace gas flows in underground reservoirs using a number of methods which are directly applicable to monitoring CO2 storage, namely:
Whilst all of these methods are currently in use in the hydrocarbon industry, monitoring CO2 storage will need to be carried out accurately over a much longer time period than current monitoring technologies will allow and hence further research is this area is required.