Plans have been announced for a study of the Kish Bank Basin off the coast of Dublin to assess whether it could be used for the storage of carbon dioxide or natural gas.
The study - called the Ulysses Project - is to be carried out by exploration company Providence Resources and Star Energy, a subsidiary of Malaysian oil company Petronas.
Star already has gas storage developments in the UK and Europe. The companies say a similar project known as Sleipner has been operating in the Norwegian North Sea since 1996.
The study will look at carbon sequestration, a method of capturing CO2 and storing it without releasing it into the atmosphere. The Norwegian project It has sequestered 10 million tonnes of CO2 so far.
The Department of Energy, Communications and Natural Resources recently offered the two companies a three-year licensing option in the Kish Bank Basin.
