IRIS AS – International Research Institute of Stavanger – is a recognized research institute with high focus on applied research, equally owned by the University of Stavanger and the regional foundation Rogaland Research. Rogaland Research was established in 1973, and because of a technical re-structuring of its ownership, IRIS was formed in 2006. The continuation of Rogaland Research’s activities provides IRIS with a long and proud history right from the start in 1973. Research activities in 70’s begun in the area of social science, but quickly developed to include petroleum. Today IRIS remains an independent research institute with a staff of over 200 people, where a clear majority has a PhD degree. IRIS R&D activities are in petroleum, new energy, marine environment, biotechnology, social science and business development areas. IRIS has been involved in “green-shift” activities in general and CO2 utilisation and storage research in particular for more than 15 years both nationally through public and industry sponsored projects and internationally through EU projects within FP and Horizon2020 programs. IRIS is coordinating the ECO-BASE project and is involved in majority of the sub-projects.

National Institute for Research and Development of Marine Geology and Geoecology -GeoEcoMar, established in 1993, represents the focal point of national excellence in research and consultancy on marine, coastal, river and lacustrine geology, geophysics and CO2 storage. Work related to the CO2 geological storage began with the affiliation of the institute to ENeRG in 2001 and continued with participation in national and international projects related to CCS (EU GeoCapacity, CO2NetEAST, CGS Europe and CO2Stop), culminating in becoming a member of the Global CCS Institute in 2010. GeoEcoMar is also the founder member of CO2 Club in Romania (2007) and the coordinator and main elaborator of the storage part of the feasibility study for GETICA CCS demonstration project. The institute also actively supported the transposition of CCS Directive into Romanian legislation, offering periodic consultation to National Agency for Mineral Resources, in charge of the legislative process.

Picoil Info Consult – PicOil is a private company established 1996 in Campina with a branch in Cluj-Napoca. First core domain is research for Oil & Gas industry, Picoil being one of key contractors of OMV-PETROM for reservoir studies. Picoil Reservoir Management R&D is certified by NAMR (Romanian National Agency for Mineral Resources – ANRM). Research activities are focused on EOR (enhanced oil recovery) especially using water injection, activities that includes physical modelling, exploitation analysis, production forecast and the analysis and the implementation of secondary recovery methods. The second core activity is related to HR development, with over 6.200 participants in over 500 training programs. Picoil also wrote and successfully implemented 6 structural EU funded major projects. Since 2008, Picoil quality management is certified ISO 9001 by DEKRA. Picoil delivered over 60 reservoir studies for companies exploiting oil and gas in Romania, having an extensive knowledge of Romanian reservoirs. 16 Feasibility studies involved EOR methods, mainly water injection. These studies cover almost all Romanian regions, i.e. 5 in Moldova, 9 in Muntenia and 2 in Oltenia. Also experimental injection of CO2 and gas was conducted in 2 oil reservoirs in Muntenia.

CO2 Club Association carries out professional activities on reducing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere by capture and geological storage: Issuing periodical publications of the newsletter type comprising specific information of technical and legal character on local situation on CO2 emissions control; Carrying out specific studies and analyses; Promoting specific research projects within national and European programs; Exchange and dissemination of ideas, knowledge and experience in the aforementioned field by organizing conferences, workshops, seminaries as well as other similar events; Implication in lobby activities together with Romanian civic society in front of policy makers in problems of reducing, capturing and stocking of CO2 emissions; Collaboration and cooperation with similar organization national or foreign; Supporting the contacts and exchange of information among stakeholders from industry, research and education. The representative scientific-technical international event organized by CO2 Club under the generic title “Promoting CCS in Romania”, on 2008, 2010 and 2012, played an important role for supporting the demonstrative Romanian project “GETICA CCS”. CO2 Club Association had also activities of translating into Romanian language, printing and distributing in Romania of specialized publications of CO2GeoNet, Bellona, ZEP and others.

 

National Technical University of Athens – NTUA, School of mining & metallurgical engineering. The laboratory of Applied Geophysics was established on 1992 and in the year 2000 it has been incorporated with the unit of Drilling Technology and Petroleum Engineering headed ever since by Professor Sofia Stamataki. The main purpose of the Laboratory is to serve the educational and research needs in the scientific field of geophysical surveys and drilling for subsurface investigation and research / exploitation of hydrocarbons. The equipment and expertise available (the laboratory numbers 6 members of staff, of which 50% holds a PhD) allows the Lab to operate in the following areas: 1. Surface Applied Geophysics (Field measurements, analysis, processing and interpretation of data with the application of geophysical methods such as gravity and magnetic methods, seismic refraction, electrical methods (soundings, profiling and electrical tomography), electromagnetics (conductivity measurement, ground penetrating radar). 2. Geophysical prospection in boreholes (Well logging in drilling of 300 feet depth, measuring natural gamma radiation, density, temperature, conductivity, resistance, single point resistance and self potential). 3. Drilling Technology (Pilot rotary drilling rig for shallow vertical or inclined drilling and continuous sampling with all the mechanisms and parts of a typical drilling system). 4. Geothermal energy (the lab has developed a hybrid geothermal unit that covers the air conditioning of the school building).  5. Hydrocarbon Exploitation unit of the Lab offers powerful computing base and specialized software along with other field areas of the laboratory (CMG-Black Oil Simulator, PVT-Simulator, Resix plus INTERPEX, Magixxl INTERPEX, Res2dinv – ResSdinv, Geoplot (Geoscan), Insite (Geoquest), SIP, Eavesdropper, RAMAC, REFLEXW, VIEWLOG) with the help of which can respond to needs of Evaluation / analysis of underground reservoirs, Simulation of thermodynamic behaviour of reservoir fluids , Reservoir Engineering (reservoir simulation), Underground storage of natural gas in exploited oil or gas fields, and CO2 storage in depleted gas fields and/or oil fields with EOR.

Middle East Technical University – METU PAL. METU PAL is a part of Middle East Technical University and is managed by the teaching staff of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Department. This close relation of research center and the department helps METU PAL be a vivid scientific environment. The research activities related to MSc and PhD degrees have contributed to the understanding of fundamentals of CO2 storage in different media, such as coal, saline aquifers or depleted gas fields. As a university research centre, METU PAL has a close relation and an organic bond with METU Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Department; therefore the main areas expertise of the scientists are mainly composed of reservoir, drilling, production and natural gas engineering. Besides, being Turkey’s first established and accredited fuel quality laboratory, METU PAL has a big expertise on laboratory management and know-how on the fuel analyses. Not only the routine fuel analyses (not less than 3000 per year) but also all kinds of petroleum and geothermal related problems are being researched in the centre, such as, for example, oil/ gas and geothermal reservoir evaluations and natural gas demand modelling. Several case studies were conducted for fields in Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan on natural gas storage, and geothermal energy production. For reservoir modelling purposes CMG-GEM, Schlumberger-Eclipse, Schlumberger-Petrel, LBNL-ToughReact and LBNL-Tough2 software are being used.

TNO is the leading research institute in the Netherlands on CCS with involvement in many international projects for almost two decades, including the coordination of EU research programs for subsurface CO2-storage in aquifers, gas, oil, and coal-bed reservoirs. Recently, TNO has performed national and international contract work for site specific evaluations of CCS projects. TNO has expertise extending over the entire CO2 chain from capture to transport to storage. TNO isalso the leading organization for the CATO project, the Dutch €80 million national program on CCSwith more than 40 partners from industry, academia and research institutes. On an international scale, TNO is active in the oil and gas industry, e.g., well and pipeline flow assurance, sensor development, basin modelling, geological modelling, seismic interpretations, reservoir engineering, prospect evaluation and production forecasting to portfolio management.