AT THE MAJOR CCS PROJECTS: QUEST, AQUISTORE

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
09/28/12

AT QUEST: ENVIRO GROUP SAYS PROJECT ‘GREENWASHING’ OIL SANDS DEVELOPMENT

An environmental group typically supportive of carbon capture and storage technology has come out against Shell Canada’s Quest CCS project for “greenwashing” the expansion of western Canada’s heavy-emitting oil sands development. The Natural Resources Defense Council recently spoke out against the $1.35 billion project, greenlighted by Shell and its partners Chevron and Marathon Oil earlier this month. The project, which is set to start construction in the coming weeks, is a small emissions reductions measure meant to afford oil companies like Shell with enough public support to further expand oil sands development operations in Alberta, Anthony Swift, an attorney for NRDC’s international program, told GHG Monitor. “NRDC supports CCS, but the real issue is that Quest has been presented as a rationale for increased production of the tar sands,” he said. “At the end of the day, though, Quest isn’t a project that really cleans up the production of tar sands. It reduces the emissions from one small part of the production process.”

The project entails retrofitting Shell’s carbon capture technology onto the company’s existing Scotford oil sands upgrader located near Edmonton, Alberta. Shell officials said that they plan on capturing one million tons of CO2 per year, or about one-third of emissions from the upgrader, for storage in a nearby saline aquifer. However, Swift said that the emissions reductions achieved by the project will quickly be quashed by expansion of oil sands development operations currently being planned by the company elsewhere in the province. “The issue here is that not only does Quest not clean up current existing facilities, but it doesn’t quite clean up one of the many tar sands expansion projects that have been proposed recently,” Swift said. He also cited a study published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which said that open pit oil sands mining could release tens of millions of tons of sequestered CO2 and further hurt CO2 storage potential in the region.

Swift Criticizes ‘Social License’ Concept

Swift highlighted remarks made by Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes earlier this month, who said at Quest’s launch event that the project would provide a “social license” for companies to move ahead on oil sands development. “[Quest] allows us to maintain the social license we need to continue to develop our immense oil sands resources in this province,” Hughes said at the event. “We are going to continue to develop this national asset, and we will do it in an environmentally responsible way.” Swift said proponents’ advertising of the project as clean is akin to “greenwashing” further oil sands development, which has a larger greenhouse gas emissions footprint than conventional oil production. “The speed of which Alberta is planning to expand its production of tar sands far outstrips any progress the province has made in CCS technology,” he said. NRDC is pushing for a moratorium on the expansion of oil sands operations in western Canada.

Other pro-CCS groups in Canada have taken slightly different views of the project. “We support the project itself. It’s definitely a step forward for CCS in Alberta…and it’s the kind of project that’s needed to show that there’s a role for CCS in industries like the oil sands,” Chris Severson-Baker, managing director of the Canadian think tank the Pembina Institute, said in an interview. “At the same time, it’s a very small reduction relative to the size of the emissions from the oil sands, and so it doesn’t provide the solution that the Alberta government has suggested in the past that CCS represents for the oil sands.” Severson-Baker said his group saw Hughes’ “social license” remark as a step forward for oil sands proponents. “For almost the first time, a senior government official in Alberta is recognizing that there is a social license to operate problem with the oil sands. Before, they said there was only a perceived problem. So this could be viewed as one first logical step towards ultimately dealing with that, but it’s certainly not the only thing they’ll have to address in order to regain that social license,” Severson-Baker said.

Shell Defends Project

Meanwhile, Shell defended the company’s efforts to reduce emissions from its oil sands development operations. “From our perspective, we’re doing everything we can to close that gap between [emissions from] conventional oil and gas production and heavy oil,” Bill Spence, head of Shell’s CCS operations, told GHG Monitor in response to a question at a briefing on the Quest project in Washington, D.C., this week. “I see [Quest] as part of the responsible closing of that gap. To do this at a bigger scale right now would probably not be wise. To do this at this scale, to prove that it works and it is scalable, is the right thing to do.”

Company spokeswoman Adrienne Lamb added that Shell agreed with NRDC that Quest alone “does not provide the emissions reductions needed.” “But it’s an important start,” she said. “Beyond the role that Quest will play in reducing CO2 emissions from our existing oil sands mining operations—which are fairly significant—it has an important role in helping to provide knowledge that could help kick start other CCS projects. The reason that we applied CCS to our upgrader was because it was the most economic application of this technology at this time for the oil sands as the upgrading of oil sands products represents a significant percentage of the total CO2 emissions from oil sands production.”

AT AQUISTORE: PTRC DRILLS SASKATCHEWAN’S DEEPEST WELL

The Petroleum Technology Research Centre has finished drilling Saskatchewan’s deepest well as part of its Aquistore CO2 storage project, the Regina-based group announced this week. Researchers finished drilling the 11,142-foot deep injection well earlier this month after 58 days of drilling, the group said. The well is set to be the injection point for CO2 captured from SaskPower’s nearby Boundary Dam facility for deep saline storage in the Deadwood formation of the Williston Basin in southeast Saskatchewan. “We are ecstatic about the news,” PTRC CEO Malcolm Wilson said in a statement this week. “This project is already the first of its kind in the world. To find out we drilled the deepest well is a nice surprise.” PTRC said it will begin drilling an observation well of a similar depth nearby beginning in October.

PTRC said that information gleaned from the injection well such as logs and core samples will help inform CCS, as well oil and gas projects in the area. While the region is brimming with oil and gas reserves, most wells drilled for their production are shallow. The group said that the well could become a primary data point for geologic information about the Deadwood formation because of its depth.

Once fully operational later next year, the $26.5 million CO2 monitoring, verification and accounting project is designed to receive up to 2,000 tons per day of CO2 captured a mile away from Boundary Dam’s soon to be retrofit Unit 3. In the meantime, once drilling work is complete, PTRC said it will begin conducting injection work using water and eventually food-grade CO2 beginning early next year. Researchers previously said Aquistore’s proximity to Boundary Dam will give SaskPower, the plant’s operator, the ability to conduct fully-integrated test work for Unit 3 earlier than if it had to rely on its enhanced oil recovery off-takers. Aquistore will also provide SaskPower with “buffer protection” to meet emissions performance standards recently finalized by the Canadian government earlier this month, project officials said, particularly if there are any hiccups with its enhanced oil recovery contracts.