INTERVIEW-Norway may fall short in carbon burial race

By Alister Doyle and Wojciech Moskwa

OSLO, March 14 (Reuters) - Norway may fall short of its goal of being first to develop technology for burying greenhouse gases from power plants, a drive Oslo has likened to the 1960s space race, Environment Minister Erik Solheim said on Friday.

Solheim told Reuters that Norway, the world's number five oil exporter, was planning to spend billions of dollars on ways to capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the exhaust of gas-fired power plants and entomb it to combat global warming.

Oslo has long said it wants to lead a global race for carbon capture. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has even likened Norway's push to the Apollo programme that put U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969.

But Solheim said efforts focused on coal-fired power plants in countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan or China were likely to succeed before Norway's research focused on plants run on natural gas.

"We have coined this as our Moon landing project. But when Mr. Stoltenberg and I are landing on the Moon, someone else will be there already, based on coal," Solheim said.

"If the carbon capture and storage is developed, it would be of world significance ... however, I think that we will most likely have a first in other countries because it seems to be easier to do it from coal than from gas," he said.

The U.N. Climate Panel says carbon burial, perhaps in disused oil and gas fields, could be more important in fighting global warming this century than a shift to renewable energies such as solar or wind power.