A decade later, Alberta plan aims to both constraint CO2 and boost oil output

Nearly a decade after winning millions of supervision dollars in support, a plan with a clearly paradoxical goals of trapping hothouse gas and boosting oil outlay is staid to move a new dimension to a Alberta oilpatch.

In August, Enhance Energy announced it has enlisted Wolf Midstream as a partner on a long-awaited Alberta Carbon Trunk Line plan to constraint CO2 from dual Edmonton-area industrial sites and boat it 240 kilometres south to a bequest oilfield nearby Clive, Alta.

The wells are to be drilled and a line consecrated by late 2019.

Just a starting point

But that’s usually a starting point, according to a dual private Calgary companies, who contend rising CO taxes in Canada and writer direct for CO2 to awaken oil from some of Alberta’s rebate prolific oilfields could fuel a fast enlargement of a scheme.

It was a opposite universe in 2009 when a plan was betrothed $63 million from Ottawa underneath then-prime apportion Stephen Harper and $495 million from Alberta underneath former Conservative premier Ed Stelmach.

The income was to be spent on upgrading a due Sturgeon Refinery to yield a pristine CO2 tide for a project, as good as building a tube and drilling a wells, with some set aside for handling costs.

Startup was approaching in 2012, though delays in building a refinery and problem in lifting collateral after a oil cost break of 2014 resulted in a plan being put on hold.

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“Government appropriation was vicious for this plan given it was built to have a lot of additional ability … a 40,000-tonne (per day) tube that is usually going to primarily lift 5,000 tonnes per day,” pronounced Enhance CEO Kevin Jabusch in an interview.

“I don’t trust it’s as vicious for a subsequent incremental further to a system.”

Compressed CO2 mixes with oil trapped in spaces in a stone and augmenting vigour so that wanton flows some-more simply toward a liberation wells, pronounced Jabusch. At a surface, a CO2 is separated, recompressed and sent behind down an injection well.

In a oilfield Enhance primarily intends to tap, about half of a strange oil in place has been recovered.

“We consider we can get another 15 to 20 per cent,” pronounced Jabusch, adding a CO2 will be sealed subterraneous when all a recoverable oil has been constructed and a good is capped and abandoned.

He pronounced it won’t escape.

“We’re putting it in reservoirs that have hold oil and gas for hundreds of millions of years, so we’ve got sealed containers.”

The ACTL line is approaching to attract business building several some-more 2,000- to 5,000-tonne-per-day extended oil liberation (EOR) projects over a subsequent 5 to 10 years, Wolf CEO Gordon Salahor said.

EOR, a routine of injecting substances including prohibited and cold water, propane, healthy gas and chemicals into subterraneous reservoirs to furnish some-more oil, is zero new.

About 20 per cent of non-oilsands wanton in Western Canada is constructed regulating EOR and that prolongation is rising, adult 83,000 barrels per day over a past decade, while non-EOR volumes have declined by about 116,000 bpd, according to a Jun news by Capital Markets analysts.

The same news dubs CO dioxide for EOR a “magic bullet” for a zone given Canada’s hothouse gas rebate oath and Ottawa’s CO cost that rises to $50 per tonne by 2022.

Using CO2 for EOR formula in a half-tonne boost in downstream emissions for each tonne of CO2 brought to a EOR site, given of downstream expenditure of a increasing oil production, according to a 2013 investigate constructed by a Pembina Institute environmental think-tank.

But there is a net rebate in altogether CO2 emissions if one assumes that a oil constructed displaces required crude, with an even bigger net rebate if it displaces oil from a oilsands, a investigate says.

It starts to glue together opposite projects that start to emanate a bit of an industrial ecosystem around a use of CO2 for mercantile purposes.– Duncan Kenyon, Pembina’s module executive of obliged hoary fuels

The domestic meridian provincially and federally has shifted divided from CO constraint and storage though a study’s end that CO2 for EOR is a current partial of a meridian change resolution is still relevant, pronounced Duncan Kenyon, Pembina’s module executive of obliged hoary fuels.

Industries that are among a biggest generators of jobs and resources in a Canadian economy — consider energy, fertilizer, chemicals, concrete and steel — also furnish a biggest emissions, he said. Capturing a CO2 and storing it subterraneous doesn’t yield a income indispensable to make such programs financially sustainable.

That’s because a ACTL is a “foundational project,” he said, observant it runs by a center of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland segment and leads to mature oilfields that are developed for CO2-powered extended oil recovery.

“It starts to glue together opposite projects that start to emanate a bit of an industrial ecosystem around a use of CO2 for mercantile purposes,” pronounced Kenyon.

He believes a ACTL plan will be some-more effective than Canada’s largest CO2 for EOR project, Saskatchewan’s Boundary Dam 3, that he calls a “boondoggle” for a $1.5-billion cost and bad operational lane record given opening in 2014, as good as a sourcing of CO dioxide from a coal-fired energy plant.

Enhance and Wolf are counting on some-more than oil to make a profit. The trapped CO dioxide qualifies for glimmer credits in Alberta that can be purchased by vast emitters to equivalent a provincial CO taxation — now set during $30 per tonne — they contingency pay.

The Alberta supervision reports that over 49 million tonnes of glimmer offsets have been generated and sole given a module began in 2007. It says equivalent producers news removing prices of between $20 and $26 per tonne.

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Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-carbon-trunk-line-1.4816373?cmp=rss