CO2 Storage – the technical and commercial challenges

Ahead of the SPE Aberdeen “CO2 Storage” conference on 31 September and 1 October in Aberdeen – come and hear about the key issues facing CO2 storage today at an SPE Panel Dicussion on 24^th September 2025.

We are delighted to welcome Peter Abelard as our keynote speaker to consider whether the CCS hype is over – and whether reality is at last setting in for the C CS market. He will outline Equinor’s ambitions in CCS and what they signal for the future

Our other panellists will dive into the technical issue that are emerging as CO2 storage projects move from early hype to commercial delivery. Jo Bagguley of the NSTA will provide the unique regulators perspective. Mark Lakos from RFDyne and Reza Sanee from Axis will provide insights into how very technical details can impact your understanding of CO2 storage volumes; and Gavin Ward from RISC Decisions will consider how this uncertainty can be incorporated into project and commercial decision making.

It promises to be a lively discussion on an activity that is finally emerging from all the talk and is starting to happen.

Our speakers:

Peter Ablard:

Peter heads up Equinor’s Subsurface Low Carbon Solutions team across Europe. His team works to access acreage and progress major capital projects in both core and emerging regions, supporting Equinor’s ambition to be a leader in the energy transition.

With almost two decades of experience in the oil, gas, and CCS sectors, Peter has held a range of technical and leadership roles within several major operators. Prior to his current position, Peter led Equinor’s UK subsurface team. He has also served as Discipline Leader for Geology and Petrophysics, and contributed as a geoscientist across CCS, gas, light oil, and heavy oil developments.

Peter brings a deep understanding of subsurface systems, a commitment to technical excellence, and a passion for enabling low-carbon energy solutions through innovation and collaboration.

Mark Lakos:

Mark is a senior reservoir engineer with 8 years of experience in the exploration and production sector, having worked with both operators and service companies across diverse projects in Europe and Africa, onshore and offshore.

Mark's work has covered a broad range of technical areas, including field development and production optimization. This year, he participated in a research project on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and co-authored a related paper. In addition to his engineering background, he is a CFA charter-holder, enabling him to bridge technical and financial perspectives in the energy industry.

Dr Jo Bagguley:

Head of Pre-licensing & Storage, NSTA

Jo has been working in the energy sector for more than 25 years, working for several oil and gas operating companies before joining the NSTA in March 2016. The majority of her career in the private sector has been spent in exploration but Jo also spent several years working on producing fields in both onshore and offshore roles.

Within the NSTA, Jo is in the New Ventures Directorate and leads a technical subsurface team which has responsibility for the evaluation of future licensing opportunities for both the petroleum and carbon storage sectors. Jo is a geologist having studied at Durham and Aberdeen universities before gaining a PhD in seismic sequence stratigraphy at Oxford Brookes University.

Gavin Ward:

Gavin is General Manager of RISC Advisory’s European office, an energy industry, technical consultancy working with operators, banks, and private equity groups. He is author of many papers on risk and volume estimation based on decades of peer reviewing and valuing assets and companies in every continent and readily translates technical evaluations into meaningful economic assessments. He started his career as a sedimentologist at Corex and Paleoservices and then geophysicist at Phillips Petroleum. He moved into portfolio management as Corporate Business Advisor for Noble Energy based in Houston and returned to the UK as Europe and Mediterranean Portfolio Manager for Noble. He was the Reserves and Economics Manager at Centrica Energy when they acquired Venture Production, and then Regional Subsurface Manager for the Morecambe Bay gas fields during the discovery and development of the Rhyl field. He finally moved to working in Aberdeen with Centrica Energy as Non-Operated Producing Assets Manager responsible for 14 North Sea fields.

He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered, Certified Accountants, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, and was awarded Honorary Life Membership of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain. Gavin is a past Finance Director of GESGB Conferences Limited and is currently Chair of the Audit Committee of the Geological Society.

Rena Sanaee:

Reza is a principal geomechanics engineer at Axis Well Technology. He is chartered engineer, and Fellow of IoM3 and HEA. He is also the strategic advisor for Energy at IoM3 since Jan 2023. He used to lead the global CCUS technical community of COWI in 2023-2025. He has worked with major operators like BP and Statoil prior to his academic role as programme manager of MSc Drilling and Well Engineering at Robert Gordon University. Reza has undertaken due diligence for flagship CCS projects and has been in the SPE Aberdeen CCS conference organising committee for the past several years."