U.s. Geological Survey July 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We (U.S. Geological Survey) will ask the Office of Management and Budget (OMS) to approve the information collection (IC) described below. As required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), and as a part of our continuing efforts to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, we invite the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on this IC. As a federal agency, we may not conduct or sponsor and you are not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

In 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act (Pub. L. 110-140) directed the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct a national assessment of potential geologic storage resources for carbon dioxide (CO2). The first requirement stipulated in the legislation was to develop a methodology to estimate storage potential that could be applied uniformly to geologic formations across the United States, and then to announce the publication of the methodology in the Federal Register. The methodology, ``A Probabilistic Assessment Methodology for the Evaluation of Geologic Carbon Dioxide Storage,'' was published as an Open-File Report by the USGS and can be downloaded from: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1127. This new methodology incorporates comments from the public, the heads of affected Federal and State agencies, and technical experts from Federal agencies, institutions of higher education, nongovernmental organizations, State organizations, industry, and international geoscience organizations, as required by the legislation. The new methodology will allow the USGS to assess the geologic CO2 storage resource potential for the United States. The results of the USGS national assessment will provide important information to evaluate the potential for CO2 storage as a mitigation option for global climate change.