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Who’s doing geological carbon sequestration?
In this section you will learn about geological carbon sequestration activity in the following areas around Manitoba:
Manitoba
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Manitoba is not a big oil producer compared to Alberta or Saskatchewan but we do have oil fields in the southwestern area of the province. There are some projects proposed or underway to experiment with geological sequestration here:
Tundra Oil & Gas Partnership
There is a pilot project under way by Tundra Oil & Gas to sequester
25 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day in the Sinclair oil field using trucked CO2 from Koch Fertilizer in Brandon.
Epic Engineering
A study was conducted by Epic Engineering in early 2008 involving the use of CO2 in Manitoba’s oil fields.
Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership (PCOR)
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Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership (PCOR) is a collaboration of over 80 U.S. and Canadian stakeholders including the three Prairie Provinces. It is laying the groundwork for CO2 sequestration projects in the heartland of North America. (1)
As well as Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, the Plains partnership includes the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin.
PCOR, led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota, is conducting geologic CO2 storage projects in the Alberta and Williston Basins.
Williston Basin
The Williston Basin project in North Dakota will couple enhanced oil recovery and CO2 storage in a deep carbonate formation that is also a major saline formation. The CO2 for this project will come from a post-combustion capture facility located at a coal-fired power plant in the region.
Alberta Basin
A second test will be conducted in north-western Alberta and will demonstrate the co-sequestration of CO2 and hydrogen sulphide from a large gas-processing plant into a deep saline formation. This will provide data about how hydrogen sulphide affects the sequestration process.
Canada
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In March 2008, the Canadian federal government announced its intention to require oil sands projects, oil sands upgraders, and coal-fired power plants built after 2012 to have emissions profiles equivalent to that of facilities employing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology by 2018. (2)
Canada sees a potential value to CCS because of the proximity of large point sources of CO2 and potential geological sinks for CO2. For this reason, Canada has, for the past 15 years, been active in exploring the opportunities for CCS, in developing and testing techniques and technologies to implement it, and in examining the associated policy, regulatory, environmental, and public education issues. At least 126 projects have been identified by the end of 2005. (3)
Until now, CCS has not been recognized as a mitigation option by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Canada is actively promoting the inclusion of CCS within the UNFCCC.
USA
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The US Department of the Energy (DOE) is expecting that large numbers of new power plants and fuel processing facilities will be built in the coming decades, in both the developing world as well as in some areas of the US and Canada. These new facilities, along with existing plants that can be retrofitted, will create opportunities for deploying CO2 capture technologies. (4)
DOE has created a network of seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs) to help develop the technology, infrastructure, and regulations to implement large-scale CO2 sequestration in different regions and geologic formations within the USA.
Collectively, the seven RCSPs represent regions encompassing
- 97% of coal-fired CO2 emissions
- 97% of industrial CO2 emissions
- 96% of the total land mass
- essentially all the potential geological sequestration sites available in the USA. (5)
The seven partnerships include:
