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Analysis A top boffin working for major energy companies says that Blighty could enjoy a second North Sea oil bonanza - by squirting surplus CO₂ from factory chimneys down into exhausted fields, so forcing more oil up the wells.

In a study funded by European energy megacorp DONG and industry geoscience consultants Ikon Science, Professor Jon Gluyas has determined that at least three billion barrels of extra oil could be squeezed out of the North Sea using carbon emitted from handily-situated northeastern UK industries. He unveiled his plans at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London yesterday.

According to the prof, the new oil would be "just about carbon neutral" as CO₂ emissions from burning it would be counterbalanced by the CO₂ stuffed down into the oilfields and adjacent saltwater aquifers.

Gluyas based his figures on previous oilfield-squeezing efforts in West Texas, where they have been using carbon dioxide to force more black gold out of the Earth since the 1970s. He considers that use of this method would return the UK to being self-sufficient in oil as it was during the first North Sea boom, and would secure national oil supplies for the next 20 years. It would also, he contends, help to straighten out the parlous finances of the British government - again, just as the first oil boom did.

"The extra three billion barrels of oil that could be produced by enhanced CO₂ recovery would make us self sufficient and would add around £60bn in revenue to the Treasury," says the prof.

But there's a catch. Soon, left to themselves, the oil companies will start to decommission their offshore infrastructure of rigs and pipelines as the fields play out. At the moment there's no supply of CO₂ to be had out in the North Sea.

"Time is running out to make best use of our precious remaining oil reserves because we're losing vital infrastructure as the oil fields decline and are abandoned. Once the infrastructure is removed, we will never go back and the opportunity will be wasted," says the prof.

"We need to act now to develop the capture and transportation infrastructure to take the CO₂ to where it is needed. We must begin to do this as soon as possible before it becomes too expensive to do so."

In essence the prof appears to be suggesting that left to itself the oil industry will not find it worthwhile to pay for carbon-capture machinery and a new specialist pipeline network out to sea. This makes sense, as it will obviously cost more to make oil by ramming captured CO₂ down into played-out fields than it would to simply find new ones, certainly in the near future before all the new ones have been found. The government will need to provide money up front to reap its possible £60bn in new oil revenue.

The chances of getting more money out of the Treasury for carbon capture right now are about zero: but there are other ways the government could make the cash appear. Billions have been channelled into the windfarm business over the past eight years by the government without ever moving through Treasury coffers, via the Renewables Obligation Certificates scheme. This means that a kilowatt-hour of electricity generated in a wind farm provides much, much more revenue to the farmers than one generated in a normal power station. In money terms, a windfarm isn't a machine for making electricity: it's a machine for printing lucrative ROCs. The costs of this are passed on to the consumer through the electricity suppliers in the form of higher prices, without ever appearing on government books - or as an entry on people's utility bills either.

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