"The Lower Cretaceous Captain Sandstone Member of the Inner Moray Firth has significant potential for the injection and storage of anthropogenic CO2 in saline aquifer parts of the formation. Pre-existing faults constitute a potential risk to storage security owing to the elevated pore pressures likely to result from large-scale fluid injection." (John D. O. Williams, Mark W. Fellgett and Martyn F. Quinn - Petroleum Geoscience, 22, 211-222, 13 July 2016)
"A total of 39 groundwater samples have been interpreted to investigate the groundwater chemistry of the Old Red Sandstone aquifers in the Moray Firth area. Of these, 17 were collected in 2007 specifically for the Baseline Scotland project. These were augmented with a further 22 samples collected during separate BGS projects since 2001. The sites were chosen so that the data would be representative of groundwater across the Old Red Sandstone aquifers in the area." (Ó Dochartaigh, B É, Smedley, P L, MacDonald, A M, and Darling, W G. 2010. Baseline Scotland: groundwater chemistry of the Old Red Sandstone aquifers of the Moray Firth area. British Geological Survey Open Report, OR/10/031. )
The Captain Sandstone saline aquifer has been “widely hailed” in recent years as having the potential to store 15 to 100 years of carbon dioxide output from Scotland’s power industry. However new research from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh suggests the geology of the area would make it prone to gas leaks which would weaken the case for CO2 storage there. Data also indicates the saline aquifer is cut by several faults, some of which breach the seal of the Captain Sandstone aquifer, rise to the seabed and increase the risk of seabed leakage. (The paper (2017) is published in Interpretation, the peer-reviewed, international publication of the Society of Exploration Geophysics and American Association of Petroleum Geologists.)