The study being carried out by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) successfully piped, injected and stored carbon dioxide into the deep reserves and is now looking at its next 10,000t.

The CO2CRC $40 million Otway Project is Australia’s first demonstration of geosequestration and is taking place in southwest Victoria.

The project aims to inject 100,000t of compressed fluid CO2 and store it through geosequestration proving the technique is technically and environmentally sound.

CO2CRC chief executive Peter Cook said the research centre was closely monitoring the carbon dioxide and so far it was behaving just as the researchers had predicted.

“Through our monitoring programs researchers track the behaviour of the carbon dioxide in the storage reservoir using very sophisticated geophysical and geochemical techniques,” Cook said.

“Soil, groundwater and atmospheric monitoring complement the subsurface activities. The use of such a wide variety of monitoring techniques gives us a high level of confidence that the compressed liquid carbon dioxide is stored safely and securely.

“The injection process is proceeding very well and we are now starting on our next 10,000 tonnes.”

The project has been developed over the past 10 years and was officially opened on April 2 by federal Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson.