Carbon Capture

Four projects proponents that have signed Letters Of Intent (LOIs) with the Government of Alberta for funding from the $2B CCS Fund have been announced. The fourth and final project to sign a letter of intent for funding from $2B CCS fund is with Swan Hills Synfuels. The province will invest $285 million in this in-situ coal gasification (ISCG) project which will access deep coal seams. These seams, which are about 1,400 metres below surface, have traditionally been considered too deep to mine. Wells will access the seams and be used to convert the coal underground into a clean synthetic gas known as syngas. The syngas will be used to fuel new high-efficiency power generation and the CO2 created during this process will be captured and used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). $495 million will go to Enhance Energy Inc. and North West Upgrading for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL), a 240 kilometre pipeline that will transport CO2. The initial supplies of CO2 will come from the Agrium Redwater Complex and once built, the North West Upgrader. North West Upgrading will upgrade bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands and the captured CO2 will be transported to depleting conventional oilfields and used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). $745 million will go to Shell and its partners for the Shell Quest project. Quest will capture and store 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually beginning in 2015 from Shell’s Scotford upgrader and expansion, near Fort Saskatchewan. A Letter of Intent (LOI) was also signed with TransAlta Corporation and its partners for Project Pioneer at the Keephills 3 plant west of Edmonton. The project will utilize leading-edge technology to capture CO2 which will be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in nearby conventional oil fields, or stored almost three kilometres underground. The project is expected to capture one million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually beginning in 2015. The Government of Alberta’s investment in this project is $436 million. The Government of Alberta has committed all the monies in the $2 B CCS Fund. No funds will be distributed until the project proponents enter into a grant agreements with the Province. The first round of commercial scale projects is expected to achieve annual carbon dioxide reductions by 2015 equivalent to taking approximately one-million vehicles, or about a third of all registered vehicles in the province, off of the road. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a process that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and stores them in geological formations kilometers deep inside of the earth. Alberta is uniquely suited for CCS as the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin has housed oil and gas for billions of years. Oil and gas reservoirs located kilometres deep underneath the earth’s surface that have been depleted by conventional drilling can be safely used for storing CO2. Carbon capture and storage technology involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources and transporting them by pipeline to sites where they are injected into deep rock formations for permanent storage. Alberta’s energy industry has been injecting carbon dioxide into depleted oil fields to enhance oil recovery for more than 20 years.