Waiting on Technology?

An article in the New York Times in April (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/us/politics/11climate.html?_r=1) should remind all of us who are positioning ourselves to apply technology to the new CO2 sequestration segment of the industry that we are on the right track. In the article, Jonathan Pershing, U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, who was at the time leading a U.S. delegation to an international climate change conference in Germany, defended the American "lack of robust leadership" by explaining that the Obama administration was "waiting to measure the American technological ... capacity" and expecting Congress to set specific targets. Many of us expect either a carbon tax credit or cap and trade schemen in the next 6 months to drive the financial business case for applying what have traditionally been hydrocarbon extraction technologies from the oil and gas industry to new CO2 sequestration projects. Pershing has been at this post only since mid-March but brings, interestingly, a geology and geophysics degree to the position from the University of Minnesota. And he seems to know the oil business. In 2004, he gave a presentation at an "ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMICS" conference of the IEEE, in which he showed the possibility of up to 4% reduction in shareholder value of various oil companies due to restricted access in sensitive areas, either closer to human populations, remote, or in terrestrial or marine ecoregions. It highlighted many companies that are now actively involved in "green" initiatives such as CO2 sequestration.