Shell mulls new carbon capture refinery
Won’t make decision on Alberta site until 2023
Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Tuesday announced it is considering investing in a new large-scale carbon-capture complex at its Scotford refinery and chemicals plant near Edmonton as the multinational oil and gas company looks to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
The proposed complex, to be called Polaris, would capture 750,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the refinery and chemical plant, and could eventually store CO2 on behalf of other industrial emitters.
Shell said it will not decide whether to build Polaris until 2023, and declined to disclose the estimated capital or operating costs.
Still, the company has set a goal to capture 25 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2035 and has already disclosed or invested in projects in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Norway. The company has also said reducing emissions at Scotford and other facilities will ensure it remains competitive as the carbon tax and clean fuel regulation increasingly create an economic advantage for cleaner companies.
“Our customers have made commitments to net zero, they’ve made commitments to reduce their carbon footprint,” Susannah Pierce, Shell Canada president said. “Our product offering is going to give them something to say we’re actually procuring low-carbon fuels.”
Pierce added that in the absence of efforts to reduce carbon emissions, "frankly, I don’t think we could compete in terms of customer demand and then also in terms of our own commitments to net zero.”
Since 2015, the company has been operating its Quest carbon-capture project, which captures about onethird of the emissions from the Scotford bitumen upgrader.
The Scotford complex, which Shell opened in 1984, includes an upgrader and refinery that convert synthetic crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, propane and butane.
An adjacent chemical plant makes styrene monomer, which is used in food containers, home insulation and other products, as well as ethylene glycol, which is used to make drinking bottles and antifreeze.
Quest’s captured emissions from the upgrader are transported via a 65-kilometre pipeline to a sandstone rock reservoir two kilometres below surface level. As of 2020, Quest had captured more than five million tonnes of CO2 — equivalent to about 1.25 million cars — thereby reducing about one-third of the upgrader’s emissions.
Polaris, by contrast, could reduce emissions by 40 per cent at the refinery and by 30 per cent at the chemicals plant.
The CO2 from the refinery would be transported via a 12-kilometre pipeline to to an underground reservoir near Josephburg, Alta., where it would be sequestered. In the second phase of Polaris, Shell has said it could store CO2 emissions on behalf of other industrial emitters around Edmonton.
Chris Severson-baker, Alberta regional director at the Pembina Institute, said the most exciting aspect of the project is that it reduces emissions from an existing facility, which will be crucial for Canada to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
“The challenge we have in Canada is we need to drive down the emissions from existing production,” he said. “We haven’t been able to do this so far from oil and gas or the transportation sector. This is an important project from that perspective and we need to see more like it.”
Still, skeptics say carbon-capture’s high cost and small effect on total emissions mean it remains a low-impact tool in decarbonizing the economy.
For example, in 2017, Alberta’s oil and gas sector — through production, processing, refining and transmission — was responsible for 137.1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.
That means Quest’s roughly one million tonnes of annual CO2 storage represents less than one per cent of the sector’s total emissions, and that does not include downstream emissions caused by burning the oil and gas.
Quest also cost $1.35 billion to build and had heavy government support, including $745 million from the Alberta government and $120 million from Ottawa.
“If you look at it in the context of the whole industry, this is a small reduction, but it’s pretty significant for an existing facility,” Severson-baker said. “And the fact that it’s not tied to an expansion of production is important — we need this to be happening across the whole industry.”
Shell, which continues to operate Quest though it retains only a 10-per-cent interest, has said it has learned a lot from the project and could build it for 30 per cent less today. It has also said Quest’s operating costs have been falling.
“We’re in a position right now to look forward and say the building blocks are there,” Pierce said. “The building blocks are your carbon tax and clean fuel standard, and our learning with Quest and globally to reduce costs … we have to think we’re in a pretty good place with what we’ve got.”
By the end of the decade, Shell has said it wants to start processing bio-oils and waste oils at Scotford to further reduce CO2 emissions associated with fuel production.
It has also talked about increasing production of hydrogen at Scotford, which it uses for refining. Because its current hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, it is considered grey, but it would be considered blue if it captured carbon at Scotford. Alberta is trying to implement policies that will position it as a hub for blue hydrogen made from its vast natural gas resources.
But some analysts have suggested that by 2030, as the carbon tax and other regulations spur cleaner fuels, the increased production of green hydrogen could limit the market for blue and grey hydrogen. Shell has said it may add renewable energy so it could produce green hydrogen in the future.
Its assets in Canada include Scotford, a 10-per-cent ownership stake in Quest, a 40-per-cent interest in LNG Canada, the liquefied natural gas export facility in British Columbia, shale gas positions in B.C. and Alberta, and about 1,400 Shell-branded gas stations.