This paper provides an overview of the aims, objectives and the main findings of the CO 2 QUEST FP7 collaborative project, funded by the European Commission designed to address the fundamentally important and urgent issues regarding the impact of the typical impurities in CO 2 streams captured from fossil fuel power plants and other CO 2 intensive industries on its safe and economic pipeline transportation and storage. The main features and results recorded from some of the unique test facilities constructed as part of the project are presented. These include an extensively instrumented realistic-scale test pipeline for conducting pipeline rupture and dispersion tests in China, an injection test facility in France to study the mobility of trace metallic elements contained in a CO 2 stream following injection near a shallow-water qualifier and fluid/rock interactions and well integrity experiments conducted using a fully instrumented deep-well CO 2 /impurities injection test facility in Israel. The above, along with the various unique mathematical models developed, provide the fundamentally important tools needed to define impurity tolerance levels, mixing protocols and control measures for pipeline networks and storage infrastructure, thus contributing to the development of relevant standards for the safe design and economic operation of CCS.Dedication: This paper is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague, Dr. Robert M. Woolley, who made a significant input to the CO 2 QUEST project and whose expertise, commitment and support inspired many of those around him.

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In January 1910, a chalk mine at Château-Landon in the Paris basin brutally collapsed, causing 7 fatalities. This dramatic event was related to the centennial flood of the Seine River and one of its tributaries, the Loing River, which invaded the lower parts of the mine and eventually weakened the entire structure. To understand the conditions that triggered the disaster and anticipate other catastrophic event of this kind elsewhere, the Royer mine, located in the same area, was chosen to host an underground scientific observatory. Its goal is to study water-rock interactions and in particular water circulation and unusual ground saturation conditions on the behaviour of chalk. The Royer chalk mine is shallow, above the water-table, easily accessible and globally stable. It has been equipped with a high resolution multiparameter monitoring network in 2019; all the sensors are connected to The French National Monitoring Centre for Ground and Underground risks (Cenaris). Besides from in situ observations and monitoring, series of laboratory tests are carried out on samples to study the impact of hydraulic cycles on the short-and long-term behaviors of chalk. A hydromechanical model is also under development to analyze the results and better assess the overall stability of the mine in the context of climate of change. In this paper, we provide a brief summary on the challenges to assess geohazards from abandoned chalk mines, and then present in details the observatory, its objectives and perspectives, as well as the first results after two years of activity.

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