At his lab in an industrial park in Edmonton, Bill Gunter is exploring how carbon dioxide reacts with the crude oil molecules that are drawn from the Leduc reef near Redwater, Alta.
The Alberta Research Council scientist is a veteran in the arcane science of CO{-2} injection, in which carbon dioxide is shot underground to coax stubborn oil and gas molecules out of geological formations where they have been trapped for hundreds of million of years.
He is working with Calgary-based ARC Energy Trust, which is proceeding with a pilot project to boost oil and gas production from its Redwater deposit by flooding it with carbon dioxide.
But there is a new urgency to the research. Now, Dr. Gunter is just as keen to ensure the carbon dioxide remains trapped underground as he is to enhance the recovery of ARC's valuable oil and gas deposits.
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The researcher is also hunting bigger game: He is studying the reef to determine the feasibility of permanently sequestering as much as one billion tonnes of CO{-2} in its structures.
ARC's Redwater site is strategically located just a few kilometres from the vast complex of existing and planned refineries, petrochemical plants and oil sands upgraders that will make northeast Edmonton one of the country's CO{-2} hot spots. In essence, the idea is to turn their smokestacks upside down – pumping the carbon dioxide underground rather than into the atmosphere.
“We've got the perfect conditions in Western Canada – excellent storage potential, a large source of CO{-2} and a market for it in enhanced oil recovery,” he said in an interview in Edmonton. What's lacking at the moment, he added, is the economic incentive for companies to invest the billions of dollars needed to build an integrated carbon capture and storage network.
Carbon capture and storage technology is critical to Canada's ability to meet two seemingly contradictory goals on energy and the environment. Indeed, it may be the silver bullet that allows the world to arrest climate change even as the globe consumes growing of amounts of fossil fuels to energize emerging economies like China and India.
And Canada is uniquely positioned to take a leadership role in the technology, if it can summon the political will to do so.
Much of the debate over the economy-versus-environment conundrum here focuses on the oil sands boom and how governments should manage it. Oil companies are planning to quadruple the output from the oil sands over the next 15 years, which would propel the country into the elite ranks of the world's top petroleum producers and produce jobs and wealth for all Canadians. But at the same time, the federal government has set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020. The oil sands are expected to be the single largest source of growth in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) would have to account for nearly half of Canada's emissions reductions if the country is going to meet its 2020 targets, according to Ottawa's advisory panel, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. But while the technology holds immense promise, large-scale applications remain untested and fraught with challenges. Not the least is the massive cost involved, Robert Page, the round table's deputy chairman, said in an interview.
“The economics are serious and the economics are going to be a problem,” Mr. Page said. But if government imposes a significant price on CO{-2} – either through a cap on emissions or a carbon tax – “then it begins to close the gap.”
By some estimates, it would cost $16-billion over 20 years to build and operate a system that would capture 20 megatonnes of CO{-2} per year by 2020 – a level well short of the round table's target but considered ambitious by other experts. That figure could vary widely depending on construction costs in Alberta, and the source of fuel used to fire oil sands upgraders.
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