Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
9/5/2014
While capturing carbon is the most expensive part of the carbon capture and storage process, carbon storage takes the longest to implement and is not on track for a large-scale deployment of CCS technology, Stefan Bachu, Distinguished Scientist at Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures, said during a presentation at the United States Energy Association this week. “The construction phase of a capture facility is about two years. That’s how long it took SaskPower to install its capture facility at the power plant. That’s how long it took Shell to install its capture facility at its upgrader and refinery. It takes eight-to-10 years to identify a storage site, to have it approved through the permitting process and public consultations and also to get it implemented. So whereas capture is the costliest, storage is the lengthiest in terms of getting to the point of implementation,” he said. “We’re in 2014, if you think that we need eight-to-10 years to be able to start injecting, we’re not going to achieve targets the [International Energy Agency] was thinking about a few years ago,” Bachu said, referring to initial IEA goals of having 20 demonstration projects by 2010, and 100 commercial-scale projects by 2020.
Bachu also noted that progress should not be expedited at the expense of safety, explaining that with limited knowledge concerning storage capacity and safe storage sites, an accident could mean the end of the industry. “Public safety must be paramount in deploying CCS technology. If you look at Fukushima, I’m not talking now about Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, but if you look at Fukushima, this accident, what it did to the nuclear industry. The previous two were also bad, but if you think that basically the nuclear industry in Japan is shot and in Germany. An accident at the beginning of this industry will completely kill it. The public won’t accept it anymore once an accident has occurred,” he said.
EOR May Not be Bridge to Sequestration Deployment
Bachu expressed doubt that the use of captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery will jump start carbon storage. “In the last few years, in the absence of movement in straight forward carbon capture and storage, use of CO2 enhanced oil recovery is being promoted as being maybe a stop gap, bridging measure. Personally, I’m not convinced that that’s the case,” Bachu said, going on to explain that legal and regulatory differences between EOR and CO2 storage may cause a rift between the two processes.
Bachu also noted that to date, no CO2 EOR operation has applied to transfer to a CO2 storage operation. “In your country EPA introduced the Class VI well for CO2 injection,” he said. A Class II well is currently required for EOR, while a Class VI well is required for carbon storage. “The transition of wells from Class II to Class VI imposes huge costs to CO2 EOR operations, particularly considering the large number of CO2 injection wells in CO2 EOR operations which practically precludes the transition from CO2 EOR to CO2 storage. An oil field has hundreds of oil wells and will have at least tens if not hundreds of CO2 injection wells. Converting these wells into Class VI wells is quite a significant cost,” Bachu said.
Further, various issues regarding liability exist when an operation turns from CO2 EOR to CO2 storage. “In CO2 EOR the operator is liable for operations. It’s liable only for the wells after abandonment … There is no liability for the CO2 left in the reservoir and the CO2 can be withdrawn for reuse in another reservoir for example,” Bachu said. “In CO2 storage in a deep saline formation, the operator is liable during operations. Where legislations or regulations have been introduced, the operator is liable for wells and for the CO2 in the ground for the duration of the project period and in some jurisdictions the government agreed to take over the long term liability, in others they did not or no decision is made. Again we are getting back to the confusion regarding the legal and regulatory framework,” he said, also noting that monitoring requirements are vastly different for the two processes.
