The Hamilton Spectator

Project aims to capture CO2 and boost oil

A decade after getting funds, Alberta Carbon Trunk Line to begin drilling wells next year

- DAN HEALING

CALGARY — Nearly a decade after winning millions of government dollars in support, a project with the seemingly contradict­ory goals of trapping greenhouse gas and boosting oil output is poised to bring a new dimension to the Alberta oilpatch.

In August, Enhance Energy announced it has enlisted Wolf Midstream as a partner on its long-awaited Alberta Carbon Trunk Line project to capture CO2 from two Edmonton-area industrial sites and ship it 240 kilometres south to a legacy oilfield near Clive, Alta.

The wells are to be drilled and the line commission­ed by late 2019.

But that’s just the starting point, according to the two private Calgary companies, who say rising carbon taxes in Canada and producer demand for CO2 to coax oil from some of Alberta’s less productive oilfields could fuel a rapid expansion of the scheme.

It was a different world in 2009 when the project was promised $63 million from Ottawa under then-prime minister Stephen Harper and $495 million from Alberta under former Conservati­ve premier Ed Stelmach.

The money was to be spent on upgrading the proposed Sturgeon Refinery to provide a pure CO2 stream for the project, as well as building the pipeline and drilling the wells, with some set aside for operating costs.

Startup was expected in 2012, but delays in building the refinery and difficulty in raising capital after the oil price crunch of 2014 resulted in the project being put on hold.

“Government funding was important for this project because it was built to have a lot of excess capacity ... a 40,000-tonne (per day) pipeline that is only going to initially carry 5,000 tonnes per day,” said Enhance CEO Kevin Jabusch in an interview.

“I don’t believe it’s as critical for the next incrementa­l addition to the system.”

Compressed CO2 mixes with oil trapped in spaces in the rock and increases the pressure so that crude flows more easily toward the recovery wells, said Jabusch. At the surface, the CO2 is then separated, recompress­ed and sent back down an injection well.

In the oilfield Enhance initially intends to tap, about half of the original oil in place has been

recovered.

“We think we can get another 15 to 20 per cent,” said Jabusch, adding the CO2 will be locked undergroun­d when all the recoverabl­e oil has been produced and the well is capped and abandoned.

He said it won’t escape. “We’re putting it in reservoirs that have held oil and gas for hundreds of millions of years, so we’ve got closed containers.”

The ACTL line is expected to attract customers building several more 2,000- to 5,000-tonne-perday enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects over the next five to 10

years, Wolf CEO Gordon Salahor said.

EOR, the process of injecting substances including hot and cold water, propane, natural gas and chemicals into undergroun­d reservoirs to produce more oil, is nothing new.

About 20 per cent of non-oilsands crude in Western Canada is produced using EOR and that production is rising, up 83,000 barrels per day over the past decade, according to a June report by Capital Markets analysts. At the same time non-EOR volumes have declined by about 116,000 bpd., the report said.

 ?? JEFF MCINTOSH THE CANADIAN PRESS ?? Enhance Energy CEO Kevin Jabusch's company has signed a deal to work on the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line project designed to capture CO2. He is seen with a diagram of the project at his office in Calgary, Alta., Aug. 23.
JEFF MCINTOSH THE CANADIAN PRESS Enhance Energy CEO Kevin Jabusch's company has signed a deal to work on the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line project designed to capture CO2. He is seen with a diagram of the project at his office in Calgary, Alta., Aug. 23.

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