pore space

Last month in North Dakota, over coffee and kuchen, my friend Dick shared his challenges with vague offers for leasing his pore space. As legal rulings and tax credits complicate the landscape, landowners face a murky world of deals. How can a proposed deal be determined as good or bad?

Dealmaking has picked up steam, especially by Oxy. Many of the announced deals by Oxy and others are in Texas and in the Gulf Coast region.

A critical challenge for those designing carbon dioxide storage sites is predicting where the injected gas will go. One of the only sure bets is to assume that any model of a gas plume that looks symmetrical is likely wrong.

A North Dakota Supreme Court decision changed the rules for leasing pore space from landowners and their rights to compensation. This decision and the US Inflation Reduction Act, which significantly increases tax incentives for operators’ carbon capture and storage projects, is likely to spur other states to clarify their laws regulating pore space.

Selling reservoirs’ empty pore space may become a new, big business.