Dear hosts, Deputy Secretary McSlarrow, honourable participants, colleagues. I am pleased to take part on behalf of Norway in this Ministerial Session of CSLF. It has been little over a year since CSLF was formed on the basis of an US initiative.

A substantial amount of work has been carried out in the intervening months. I would at this juncture like to commend the Australian organizers, the US Department of energy and the secretariat in particular for their efforts to date and in convening the CSLF and its members in this comprehensive fashion.

Norway welcome the efforts in CSLF and sees it as a valuable complement to ongoing international efforts aimed at meeting the challenge related to global climate change. Over time technological progress has played a decisive role, and will continue to do so, in meeting economic, energy and environmental goals, which is important in everyday life.

I am convinced that the CSLF charter and our collective contribution to accelerate relevant technological progress is the right way for us to proceed. It is therefore important that we stay focused and committed to this main task in shaping our collaboration in coming years. I also see the work of CSLF as complementary to other policies directed towards meeting our international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Norway is dedicated to share our experience and competence to the benefit of other CSLF partners. We need to build the necessary confidence that carbon capture and storage is a safe and viable way to combat climate change. It is important to gain wider public acceptance as well as to demonstrate this technology as proven.

The offshore Sleipner project in Norway represents nearly a decade of experience from the monitoring of storage of CO2 in saline aquifers through the injection 1 million tons of CO2 in the Utsira formation above the gas reservoir of the Sleeper field on the Norwegian continental shelf. This is the only experience from aquifer CO2 storage and the sole ongoing geological storage experience of that time scale. Experience data from seismic surveys and time series to map the accumulation of CO2 and its behaviour in the sub surface over time, are essential inputs to increase our understanding and document the viability of geological storage in general. The world needs more projects of this kind to continue to move along the learning curve. Implementation of such projects are not straight forward. The Sleipner project has taken nearly 15 years of extensive planning and development.

So far injection of CO2 has only taken place on shore or offshore from platform based surface wells. As more and more oil and gas operations world wide will take place on the sea bed there is also a need to gain experience from sub sea injection of CO2. On the Snoehvit gas field on the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea it has been decided to develop the field with an injection of about 700.000 tonnes of CO2 per year from 2006. The injection scheme will be the first in its kind where CO2 is injected from sub sea wells. Unlike the Sleipner injection where the CO2 is stored above the gas reservoir, the CO2 which will be injected in the Snoehvit field will be stored below the gas reservoir. This will give new experience from storage in a different geological location.

CO2 for enhanced oil recovery has been more difficult to realise in the North Sea for reasons such as technical maturity, geological challenges related to the injection schemes, accessibility of CO2 volumes and lack of infrastructure, to mention some. There is a significant technical potential for CO2 for enhanced oil recovery on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. However, currently project economics for CO2 EOR projects are marginal. Today's efforts in improving EOR techniques may pay off in the longer term.

In general, we believe CSLF has a unique and long term potential to contribute to the development, confidence building and wider use of more cost efficient carbon capture and storage technologies through co-operation among interested parties. This can only be achieved through a determined prioritization of joint efforts, and new value adding industrial and scientific collaboration as well as focused outreach activities.

We need to decide what should be the main activities of CSLF. I see the roadmap as the core instrument in framing future collaboration in CSLF, and support the recommendations set fourth by the policy group chair in his letter of 20 August to progress with the discussion of next steps in relation to the joint prioritization of key gaps. We hope that this will be reflected in the final conclusions of this meeting. I am also happy to note that we have on the table a list of joint projects to be approved by this forum.

It is important that the CSLF cooperate and coordinate with other relevant international activities so as to avoid duplication of work. This is relevant for all issues, but in particular for regulatory, legal and financial issues. Some of these issues are best handled in other bodies. However, experts could also discuss these issues within the context of CSLF and give input to relevant processes.

Moreover, it will be crucial to the success of CSLF that the views of key stake holders are sufficiently heard and incorporated in our future findings and work. These include industry and research institutions as well as NGO'es. As a first next step we hope that relevant stake holders are given a timely opportunity to influence the further work with the roadmap. Furthermore, the policy group should assume a strong leadership in securing an optimal follow up process with joint parties within CSLF.

Thank you for your attention.