ASBESTOS FIND HALTS CONSTRUCTION AT BOUNDARY DAM

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
7/12/13

Construction work at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage facility came to a halt last week after asbestos was found onsite. The provincially-owned utility confirmed this week that workers discovered traces of asbestos surrounding the gasket within the power island’s boiler. SaskPower had taken the decades-old power generation unit offline in February in order to retrofit it with a new boiler, turbine and control system.

In an interview with GHG Monitor this week, SaskPower CEO Robert Watson said construction workers have been evacuated from the site, which is now isolated and being examined and cleaned out by independent contractors. “Air quality tests have come back negative so far,” Watson said July 9. “I’m optimistic that within a few days we’ll be back to our normal construction schedule.” He said construction work on the plant’s capture island, which is housed in an adjacent building separate from the main power plant, has not been affected by the discovery.

‘Getting Very Confident’

SaskPower officials have for months touted how the 110 MW post-combustion retrofit project is “on schedule” for an April 2014 in-service date and “on budget,” and Watson said this week that he does not expect the asbestos discovery to significantly increase project costs or schedule. “We fully expect to have the power island completed around September, and we think we can still get there on time. We’re hoping to [finish] the capture island by November,” he said. Watson said costs are “coming well within line” of the $1.24 billion initially-estimated project cost. “We’re getting very confident that things will work out in our favor,” he said. “We’re confident that if we can get this on time and on budget that this will be a significant event for SaskPower and the world.”

The project, located in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan just miles from the North Dakota border, was approved by Saskatchewan’s provincial government in spring 2011 and received $240 million in federal money to build the retrofit. SaskPower secured a 10-year off-take agreement with Cenovus Energy late last year for all 1 million tonnes of CO2 that will be produced at the facility annually for nearby enhanced oil recovery operations. Cenovus is slated to build a CO2 pipeline to the facility in the coming months. In the meantime, the Petroleum Technology Research Centre’s $23 million Aquistore project will be taking CO2 captured during Boundary Dam’s hot testing period for geologic sequestration and monitoring work about a mile away from the facility.