For more information please contact:

Dr A D (Tony) Surridge
Senior Manager: Fossil Fuels
South African National Energy Research Institute (Saneri)
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
Tel: (011) 280 0448
Mobile: 079 499 5062

Sasol, Eskom, PetroSA, Anglo American plc and the South African National Energy Research Institute (Saneri) are sponsoring the development of a South African Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Storage Atlas. The total sponsorship amounts to R2 million.

The atlas is aimed at identifying potential sites for geological storage of CO2 as a mitigation measure for the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources that primarily utilise coal.

CO2 would need to be captured from industrial flue gases and then geologically stored by compressing it into liquid form and injecting it into deep geological formations, such as saline reservoirs, coal seams, or depleted oil and gas fields.  It is possible to track international developments in capture technology, but storage potential has to be determined locally.

Worldwide, storage reservoirs are commonly associated with the sedimentary basins in which oil and gas occur. South Africa unfortunately lacks natural world class storage reservoirs, but the onshore central basin of the Karoo Supergroup with its substantial sedimentary formations may offer storage opportunities. Offshore sedimentary rocks along the coastline also hold some potential for  storage.

The Council for Geoscience (CGS) and the Petroleum Agency SA will publish the initial assessment of storage potential in a user friendly atlas by April 2010.

The atlas will illustrate the distribution and ranking of potential geological CO2 storage reservoirs in South Africa, including estimated CO2 storage capacities, the main emission sources, location of industrial hubs, transportation pipelines and other factors that may have a bearing on storage feasibility.

This information would provide guidance to direct further exploration should carbon capture and storage technologies be pursued in South Africa.