CU Drills to Explore Possibility of Storing Carbon

As Springfield’s City Utilities employees continue their drilling to find whether they can safely bury carbon dioxide emitted from their power plants, local researchers are becoming more and more optimistic about the findings. KSMU’s Justin Lux has the story.

Over the weekend the crew was able to complete the drilling through the confining layer of rock that they hope will keep carbon dioxide from reaching the surface.

Gary Pendergrass, the manager of environmental compliance for City Utilities, says before the drilling can continue through the next level, which is sandstone, the crews must first record down-hole findings of the confining layer.

“We’ll do a lot of down-hole logging, down-hole video and then set in cement casing before core down through the target formation, the sandstone,” Pendergrass says.

Now that researchers know more about the confining layer, Pendergrass says the project has passed its first big obstacle.

“We passed the first big hurdle on this project, probably the most important, in that we know the confining layer is extremely tight and now the sandstone we’re looking for a rock that has a great deal of porosity and permeability that would store the CO2,” he says.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of next year. Pendergrass says the $6 million budget will be mostly covered by federal dollars from the Department of Energy, as well as money from the larger utility companies in the state.

For KSMU News, I’m Justin Lux.