“The amount of CO{-2} in the flue gas coming out of the steam boiler is about the same amount that's coming out of my mouth as I speak, 3.5 per cent or so,” said Robert Skinner, senior vice-president for commercial affairs with StatoilHydro.
The Norwegian company has the world's oldest carbon-sequestration project at its Sleipner natural gas field in the North Sea. But its efforts to tap Alberta's fund to capture oil sands carbon ran into a cost wall.
“Our own project alone, for one million tonnes [of carbon] a year, would have used nearly 75 per cent of the total $2-billion” in the provincial fund, Mr. Skinner said. “As an Alberta taxpayer, I would rather that money is used to get the biggest carbon bang for the buck. And that certainly is not in a SAGD plant up in the middle of nowhere.”
ConocoPhillips, which also examined and rejected a SAGD capture project, was more blunt: when it did the math, it found capturing, transporting and storing CO{-2} would cost $200 per tonne.
“We withdrew our proposal because of this number,” said Kevin Meyers, the departing president of the company's Canadian operations. “There are other technologies, other processes, other projects that are better suited to pursue CCS.”
None of this has, however, kept some in the oil patch from exploring ambitious CCS plans. Canadian Natural Resources is looking at piping carbon captured from an upgrader at its oil sands mine into its tailings. “To me it shows how technology can be applied in practical solutions to deal with carbon emissions, water usage and reduction in size and the speed of reclamation of tailings ponds,” Canadian Natural's Mr. Edwards said in an interview.
Pipeline builder Enbridge shares Mr. Edwards's belief in carbon capture. Enbridge has already secured underground rights to several deep saline aquifers – it believes it is the first to make such an acquisition – and has conducted engineering studies on a network of carbon pipelines that would criss-cross Alberta, transporting compressed CO{-2} from Fort McMurray and several coal-fired power plants to oil fields and aquifers.
It is also leading the Alberta Saline Aquifer Project, which has 38 industry members and is working on a pilot saline sequestration demonstration.
But the success of the project hinges, Enbridge's Mr. Szmurlo said, on how much governments are willing to support carbon capture. It will likely require the imposition of a substantial carbon price – through a tax or a cap on emissions.
“People have asked me, ‘How do you ever make a buck transporting and sequestering CO{-2}?' My answer is, the same way that waste management makes a dollar picking up the garbage in front of your house. It's deemed to be a societal good not to have your garbage lay in the alley. So society collectively contracts for a company to come along with a truck and pick up that garbage.”
“They may decide to employ the same model for their CO{-2}.”
