Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/10/2014
The province of Alberta’s new Premier Jim Prentice stated that he will not support new CCS projects in Alberta during string of interviews this week and last. Emily Wood, Press Secretary for Prentice’s office, told GHG Monitor late this week that during the interviews, “the Premier said he was committed to funding the two CCS projects underway, but will not be supporting any new projects.” The projects currently underway are Shell Canada’s Quest CCS project, which is nearing completion; and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which will be fed into by the North West Redwater Sturgeon refinery currently under construction. “We will honor commitments that have been made,” Prentice was quoted as saying in the Financial Post this week, but “further projects are on hold.” Both projects were funded in part by a $2 billion government fund for CCS projects. The Quest project has received $745 million from the fund, while the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line has received $495 million.
Prentice’s reasoning for ending the province’s support for new CCS projects, according to the articles, comes down to the cost of these projects and the unproven nature of the technology. “If you take the investments that we’ve made as Albertans and compare them on a global basis, it’s 10 percent of all the money invested worldwide in large-scale CCS projects,” Prentice was quoted saying in the Financial Post, “This is a very sizeable investment of taxpayers’ money and prudence dictates that we should ensure that we begin to see some commercial viability to these investments.”
The Quest Project, which has been under construction since 2012, is nearing completion and is due for operation next year. The project is a retrofit of capture technology onto Shell’s existing Scotford oil sands upgrader near Edmonton, Alberta. The modules which comprise the project were produced by engineering company KBR offsite in Edmonton while the capture unit itself was designed using Fluor’s 3rd Gen Modular ExecutionSM technology. When completed, the project will remove an estimated 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually from the bitumen upgrader and transport it nearly 40 miles north to a storage site. It is projected that the project can run at this capacity for 25 years. A representative from Quest was not available for comment.
