Infrastruktura - Środowisko - Energia
Dodatek lobbingowy do "RZECZPOSPOLITEJ".
9 września 2008 r.

po polsku

Our knowledge should be used...

Jerzy Nawrocki,
director of the Polish Geological Institute

One of the key tasks of the Polish Geological Institute which performs national geological and hydrogeological functions is to provide State administration with comprehensive information on mineral deposits.

Our works create conditions for balanced exploration of the deposits, also allowing for potential impact of the exploration of the natural environment. The issue of targeting the activities aimed at exploring and protecting specific energy resources produces a clear opinion. We have no choice. In the near future our power industry must be based on coal with an increasing share of brown coal. Some hope in relation to expansion of our energy resource base may be attached to our efforts aimed at expanding the available natural gas and oil resources, in particular in the unconventional part. Irrespective of exploration works on new coal, oil and gas deposits, it is of major importance for our energy security to start activities preparing a foundation for Polish nuclear energy. Our geologists and geophysicists are able to identify the areas with geodynamic parameters that are best to locate future nuclear power plants. Those locations need to be least exposed to contemporary tectonic movements. There are also our national relatively substantial deposits of uranium. Works of further exploration, documentation and mining technologies of the deposits should be continued.

The Polish Geological Institute, celebrating this year is 90th anniversary, has discovered major brown coal deposits in Poland and identified the resources (maps). The only exceptions are some deposits in Lower Silesia and Lubuski Land that had been exploited before World War II. In the 1950s several new brown coal deposits were documented, including the deposits of Adamow, Kozmin and Wladyslawow. More discoveries resulted from an exploration program of brown coal deposits in the areas of negative gravitation field anomalies. In effect, the Institute jointly with the Geological Enterprise in Wroclaw discovered and documented such well known brown coal deposits as Belchatow and Szczercow. In the 1990s the intensity of geological exploration works in Poland was largely reduced. In that time, on commission of enterprises, studies were made on prospective deposits in certain regions of our country, e.g. information on the Legnica brown coal deposit complex was prepared on commission of KGHM "Polska Miedz". Names of outstanding Polish geologists, employees of the Polish Geological Institute, are related to exploration and documentation of brown coal deposits. Before World War II the works were managed by Arnold Sarjusz Makowski. After the war, the management rested in the hands of teams headed by Prof. Edward Ciuk, Prof. Marcin Piwocki and recently Dr. Jacek Kasinski.

Exploitation of brown coal deposits must be accompanied by mitigating unfavourable changes to the natural environment as well as reduction of hot gas emissions generated during burning. I wish to stress that our country enjoys not only abundant brown coal deposits as well as geological structure assuring probably safest underground carbon dioxide storage. There are only a few European countries with geological conditions providing for appropriate large scale geological storage of CO2 (adequate capacity and tightness of collectors). In Poland such prospective sequestration systems exist in the form of isolated brine levels in the clastic rocks of the Perm-Mesozoic basin, covering today over 50% of Poland's area. The problem of providing structures for safe geological storage is a very complex scientific problem. The geological environment is a system of connected vessels, with a history and forecast future. Therefore, it is not possible to identify individual structures for CO2 storage without exploring the entire system, while detailed exploration of identified collectors should allow for elements and conditions required for safe CO2 storage for many thousands of years. An approach to the problem displayed by miners and engineers is insufficient.

Knowledge is required on geological evolution of an area as well as knowledge allowing a forecast on the evolution. Tightness of the structure is subject to contemporary tectonic activity in the area. It should be remembered that the activity in the neighbourhood of the mining area may be intensified in effect of post-mining decompression of rock masses which poses a hazard of opening new migration ways for CO2 and leaks of a system that may have been hastily selected for storage.

In view of the complex nature of the problem that requires a broad range of specialists to solve, the Polish Geological Institute has initiated works aiming at setting up a consortium of institutions involved in the issue of underground CO2 storage. Apart from the Institute which heads the Consortium, there will be scientists from the AGH University of Science and Technology, Central Mining Institute, Oil and Gas Institute, Material and Energy Economy Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Geophysical Research Enterprise. On commission of the Ministry of Environment, the consortium has drafted a program of works, including tasks and works of State geological and hydrogeological institutions and entities collaborating within the "National Exploration Program of formations and structures appropriate for safe geological storage of CO2 with monitoring".

I would like to encourage potential energy sector investors, local government bodies that attach their hopes to the sectoral development, similarly like various ecological organisations express their concerns as to the impact of such investments of various elements of the natural environment - all of them are invited to draw on the knowledge of our specialists as well as to directly use geological data collected in the Central Geological Archive managed by out Institute. I am convinced that the information obtained from us will calm down the fears and concerns as to the appropriate and necessary directions on developing the raw material base for Polish power industry. This refers also to non-conventional power generation. The Polish Geological Institute holds fundamental, direct information on thermal conditions in Poland, specialists in the sphere and long-term experience that it willingly shares with any interested parties in accordance with its mission. n

www.pgi.gov.pl