Washington (Platts)--19Dec2012/519 pm EST/2219 GMT

The US could store at least 2,400 billion mt of CO2 in saline formations, oil and gas reservoirs and unmineable coal seams, the Department of Energy said in a Wednesday report.

Those resources could potentially store hundreds of years' worth of industrial greenhouse-gas emissions, permanently preventing their release into the atmosphere, according to the 2012 Carbon Utilization and Storage Atlas.

Among its findings, the report cited more than 280 million mt of storage capacity in depleted oil and gas fields, including unconventional gas sources. That could accommodate several decades of emissions from power plants, refineries and other industrial operations while simultaneously enhancing oil and gas recovery, DOE said.

DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory compiled the report, with input from department-supported projects in 43 states and four Canadian provinces. The projects are testing CO2-storage potential and investigating best practices for CO2 storage in various geologic formations.

--Bill Loveless, bill_loveless@platts.com --Edited by Jeff Barber, jeff_barber@platts.com