We strongly advocate an assurance process, which provides the opportunity for independent experts and decision-makers to ask questions of the CO2 storage team. Examples of the types of questions that should be asked to facilitate discussion and ensure all aspects have been considered could include the following:
- What is the source of the numbers that justify the recommendation? Are they consistent with project performance history? If the numbers are better than performance history, what justifies this? Are they anchored to appropriate benchmarks, analogues, and/or models?
- Are credible alternatives included along with the recommendation? If not, request additional options that, for example, require more or less capital expenditure.
- Does the recommendation assume that an approach that is successful in one area will be just as successful in another? Need comparable examples to eliminate false inferences.
- Could the recommendation be overly influenced by analogy to a rare but memorable success? If so, need additional analogues and an analysis of their similarity to the current situation.
- Could the base case be overly optimistic? Build a case taking an outside view (pose challenges that an investor would).
- Is the worst case bad enough? Conduct a pre-mortem assuming the project has failed. What caused this?
- Is the recommendation overly cautious? May need to realign incentives to promote prudent risk-taking.
- Is there an over-attachment to a history of past decisions? People ascribe more value to projects that they have owned.
- Were there dissenting opinions leading up to the recommendation? Were these explored adequately and resolved?
- If we delay a decision on this project for one year, what data would be gathered in the interim and what impact could this have?
Not only is it important for decision makers to be asking these sorts of questions, but also it’s important for the technical team to anticipate them and conduct their work in a way that can provide definitive answers.