One View of Carbon Capture and Storage in Alberta

#Climate

New Paradigm has been working on CO₂ injection options since before Kyoto. The original challenge was to encourage capture of CO₂ from concentrated sources so that it could be used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) for light oil formations. EOR since 1972 has been the main target for CO₂injection globally as it makes economic use of the gas and currently about 50Mt/yr is injected for this purpose to produce an incremental ~500,000 bbl/d. About 30 Mt/yr is used for beverage carbonation, food processing and other products. With the increasing focus on “Net Zero for CO₂” global operating storage capacity in aquifers has slowly grown from <1.7 Mt/yr before 2015 and is currently at <11Mt/yr worldwide, with only about 1 Mt/yr of that added in the last 4 years. Alberta already has CO₂ EOR projects which have been operating for decades and one sequestration project (Shell Quest) which has avoided about 0.9 Mt/yr since 2015. The Alberta Government is currently assessing 25 new aquifer CO₂sequestration HUB projects with initial capacities which might total ~90-100 Mt/yr if they all were to proceed. The lands included for these projects would cover an area of the province equivalent to about 1050 townships. No other country in the world seems to be considering this level of massive and rapid CCS development in onshore applications. Is there a reason for this?

This presentation will take a high-level look at the processes used for sequestration, potential risks associated with each type of storage for local populations, as well as business and taxpayer risks due to remaining uncertainties. The talk will also briefly touch on why energy companies are appearing to support these massive CO₂ capture and storage projects.