Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
4/18/2014
The Canadian province of Saskatchewan will provide $400,000 in funding to the Petroleum Technology Research Centre, supplementing a $1.5 million grant awarded to the center by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy’s Carbon Storage Program. The funding supports the center’s Saskatchewan CO2 Oilfield Use for Storage and EOR Research (SaskCO2USER), which builds on more than a decade of research into CO2 geological storage conducted in the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project. “What we’re going to be doing is doing some applied research and investigating some of the topics that EOR operators would need to address in the future if they were going to seek recognition for geological storage,” said PTRC Chief Project Officer Neil Wildgust of the research. Among topics to be addressed are well bore integrity, predicting carbon dioxide migration underground and identification of effective monitoring techniques.
Ongoing cooperation between the United States, PTRC and the province of Saskatchewan has been extremely valuable in continuing research at PTRC, according to officials. “It’s critical. That support is crucial,” Wildgust said. “It really is a continuation of a long standing arrangement because the original first phase of the Weyburn-Midale research project began back in 2000 and both the U.S. DOE and the provincial government in Saskatchewan are both long running supporters of that program.” Saskatchewan Energy and Resources Minister Tim McMillan said in a press release, “Our ability to innovate and develop new technology is critical to maintaining the future viability of Saskatchewan’s oil and gas industry. Promotion and development of carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery methods provides the province with both economic and environmental benefits, and will help us meet our oil and gas related objectives in the Plan for Growth.”
