Even before a single ounce of natural gas gets burned in a home
or power plant, massive amounts of CO2 have already been
released. The process of extracting natural gas releases carbon
dioxide pent up in the same wells as the gas, thus adding to the
climate-changing impact of the fuel. To help lower the global
warming impact of one of the world's largest natural gas fields,
General Electric has supplied Chevron, Exxon Mobile and Shell
with enough compression "trains"--the pumps and turbines that do
the sequestering--to create the world's largest carbon
sequestration project. The trains will pump 3.3 million tons of
CO2 released from natural gas mining back into the ground every
year. That's the equivalent of taking 630,000 cars off the road.
The project, called Gorgon, won't go online for a couple of
years, and GE won't begin building the equipment trains for at
least another year or two. Once built, the trains will redirect
the CO2 back into an underground chamber 1.5 miles under the
ocean. Naturally, this p