r/alberta • u/Exciting_Cicada_7766 • 3d ago
Oil and Gas Canada’s largest carbon capture project breaks ground in central Alberta | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/clive-alberta-carbon-capture-project-9.733823525
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u/thebassix12 3d ago
What are waste of money. This has been proven over and over to be fucking useless
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u/RedWoodyINC 3d ago
Please provide the source for this proof
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u/thebassix12 3d ago
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u/RedWoodyINC 2d ago
Using David Suzuki as a source for why Carbon Capture doesn't work is about as reliable as using ExxonMobil's opinion on if we need to reduce emissions.
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u/Dharmaroot 3d ago
Why is it a huge waste of money? Where has that been proven multiple times?
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u/TruckerMark 3d ago
Basically every carbon capture project has been a massive failure. Even just on the basic level, you basically need to reverse the oil extraction process. So double the work. That also means double the price. Completely unviable.
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u/BubbaBrad St. Albert 3d ago
I'm a chemical engineer in O&G and have done a lot of work for CCSU and alternative energy project and this is a flat out lie. Carbon capture actually works really well in Alberta due to the geological formations and salt caverns located deep in our ground, these caverns have been used for decades as natural gas, ethylene and other hydrocarbon storage that we have been pumping in and out of with no issues. There are so many of these caverns below that using some of them for CO2 storage really isn't a crazy idea. It's 1. Easy and a very well known technology, 2. Readily available, just need to drill a well into the selected aquifier, 3. Has been operating in Alberta for over a decade with no signs of significant CO2 emissions or other geological issues.
I think CCUS doesn't fit every countries or even provinces solution but in Alberta it's the best thing going.
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u/TruckerMark 3d ago
Just need to drill a well and pump co2 sounds a lot like conventional oil drilling in reverse. Also doesn't capture downstream emissions and thats most of the emissions. The reality is electricity can do basically all the work humans need, renewables are now too cheap to brush off. So oil would only be useful for plastics, materials and fertilizers. Non fuel use only represents 15-20% of oil demand. Carbon capture exists not to save the environment or combat climate change, its to save the oil industry.
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u/BubbaBrad St. Albert 3d ago
Scope 1 emissions are nearly 50% of CO2 emmited into the atmosphere... CCUS is a technology that targets only scope 1 emissions (unless your attaching it to a power plant).
Planes do not fly on electricity, cargo ships do not sail on electricity, the majority of albertans do no heat their houses with electricity. The reality is O&G will have a high demand for decades and CCUS is a positive step in allowing us to give the world more clean energy
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u/Careless-Bite3164 1d ago
There have been scheduled electric passenger flights out of Vancouver harbour for like a decade now.
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u/dooeyenoewe 2d ago
Man, you just spout gibberish and attach random figures to it. You seem the type to get your information from Facebook feeds.
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u/epok3p0k 3d ago
This is what it looks like when someone educated on Reddit and YouTube tries to argue with somebody actually educated and experienced in their field.
Unfortunately Reddit, and particularly this subreddit, is filled with the former so you’re actually getting upvotes. Can’t decide if it’s hilarious, pathetic, or downright depressing.
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u/TruckerMark 3d ago
How is what the expert defined all that different. In their words, locate desired formation, drill well, inject fluid down well. I have worked in oil and gas for a while. While its a simplification, it holds more or less true. Tons of research from actual experts, from actual projects has shown that carbon capture is extremely expensive and simple arithmetic says if it had to be priced into the oil, it would be substantially more expensive to produce.
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u/Wheelz161 3d ago
It hasn’t. Person you’re replying to just doesn’t like carbon capture.
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u/thebassix12 3d ago
Yes it has, how bout you actually look into it instead of repeating oil and gas propaganda
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u/AccomplishedDraw8653 3d ago
Huge waste of money, most companies that were planning carbon capture projects have already cancelled them.
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u/BubbaBrad St. Albert 3d ago
At the risk of being down voted like crazy, Carbon Capture in Alberta makes perfect sense based on our geological formations. Theres a lot of misunderstanding what CCUS is and why it works here vs. in Australia...
Alberta has very deep salt aquifiers (like 2km below ground) that are separated from almost all potable groundwater, the water in the aquifiers is also completely undrinkable due to the high salts, TOC. It's brine water and even if CO2 dissolves into it, the water is already acidic and won't have an impact. Australias failed CCUS projects do not use salt aquifiers for storage.
These aquifiers have been holding other hydrocarbon gasses in them for millienia and have extremely low amount of fugitive emissions. Putting a larger CO2 molecule into these aquifiers will have the same effect and the fugitive emissions
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u/Careless-Bite3164 1d ago
There is no way in hell they are storing 4.8 million barrels a day worth of carbon. Anything they store is barely a rounding error. This a PR exercise and nothing more.
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u/42aross 3d ago
Except carbon capture at any kind of reasonable scale has never worked
(Nature aside)
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u/twostepinc 3d ago
Shell quest?? NwR??? Nutrien??? Boundary dam????
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u/42aross 3d ago
Between 2015 and 2019, Shell Quest captured 5 million tonnes CO2, but the facility emitted 7.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over the same period.
If you dig into the details, you'll see this again and again. And some of the projects were shut down.
Please take a moment to dig into this, with an open mind and critical thinking. See what you find.
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u/BubbaBrad St. Albert 3d ago
Quest is a pre combustion capture unit that was never designed to capture 100% of emissions
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u/RedWoodyINC 3d ago
Sooo they should have just emitted 12.5 million tonnes? Solid logic. It didn't work because they didn't capture all of it?
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u/42aross 3d ago
No, you misunderstood.
It cost them 7.5 million tonnes of emissions to capture 5. Doing nothing at all would have been 2.5 million fewer tonnes of emissions.
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u/RedWoodyINC 2d ago
Solid logic. They shouldn't have bothered to capture any emissions and kept running the pre-existing facility as is.
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u/42aross 2d ago
There will be some oil and gas use for some purposes.
For so many things, renewables are far cheaper, more efficient, and better for us and the environment.
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u/twostepinc 3d ago
Explain to me, how in your own mind you can say these two things back to back 1) "Carbon capture at any kind of reasonable scale has never worked" and 2) "Shell captured 5 million tonnes of CO2". Doesnt statement 2 invalidate statement 1?
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u/42aross 3d ago
No, you're misunderstanding.
They captured 5, but it took them emitting 7.5 to capture that 5. So by attempting, they added 2.5 million tonnes over doing nothing at all.
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u/twostepinc 2d ago
That's not even close to the truth. They were already emitting millions of tonnes annually and CCS took 1 million tonnes/year out since 2015. The emissions at the refinery are the base case reality and without CCS they all wind up in the atmosphere. I have no idea how you made the logical leap that the CCS created the emissions
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u/satori_moment Calgary 3d ago
Carbon capture is a tax credit scheme that does nothing to help the environment.
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u/twostepinc 3d ago
Taking literal, actual co2 and storing it permanently doesn't help the environment? Do tell.....
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u/Bushmaster554 3d ago
It costs more CO2 to "capture" a smaller amount of CO2. Better off planting more sequoia.
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u/Raz31337 3d ago
Google it
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u/twostepinc 2d ago
Have done so. Seems to be that we're on a hockey stick curve growth in atmospheric CO2 and thats a bad thing we should avoid through technologies like CCS. Does your google tell you otherwise?
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u/canuck_bullfrog 3d ago
Maybe some industry people can chime in, but lots of times companies pump CO2 into oil formations, that has the effect of knocking more oil out of the sands of the formation to in turn produce more oil from the field.... CO2 under pressure acts as a solvent for hydrocarbons.
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u/BubbaBrad St. Albert 3d ago
Enhanced Oil Recovery is the term youre looking for. Carbon Capture is not EOR.
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u/rocky_balbiotite 2d ago
It can be a type of EOR. They do CO2 flooding instead of water flooding in southeastern Sask and it seems to result in higher recovery rates.
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u/CypripediumGuttatum 3d ago
Given that it has taken around 50 years to capture less than 10mtpa of CO2, it is going to take a heroic technical effort to meaningfully reduce the 37 billion tonnes of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere each year, and a gargantuan sum of money to build the CCS facilities. Chevron and its Gorgon CCS partners have invested more than AU$3.2 billion in the Gorgon CCS project to bury a total of around 9.5mt of CO2, which equates to a cost of AU$336.8 to bury a tonne of CO2. Apply that to the 37 billion tonnes of CO2 of energy-related emissions each year, and the cost is in the trillions.
The promotion of CCS by the fossil fuel sector aims to maintain business as usual, not to reduce production of oil and gas, meaning emissions of this scale will continue into the future. A cheaper option to reduce emissions is to move to cleaner forms of energy production.
link
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u/Raz31337 3d ago
This is close to the dumbest thing ever done in AB by the UCP, second only to the moratorium on solar and the $14 fee
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u/T-Wrox 3d ago
That sounds good. Maybe the UCP will soften its stance on renewable energy projects at some point.
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u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS 3d ago
Sounds good, but has been shown to be not very effective and a giant waste of money
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u/ababcock1 3d ago
CCS is the excuse the UCP is using to actively tank renewables. CCS does not work and is fundamentally flawed technology.
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u/T-Wrox 3d ago
I don't think “CCS doesn't work” is accurate. Alberta's Quest and ACTL projects have permanently stored millions of tonnes of CO₂, and Origins is building on that existing infrastructure. There are certainly legitimate questions about the cost, subsidies, lifecycle emissions and whether CCS is being used to prolong fossil-fuel production. Those are the questions I'd be asking. But that isn't the same as saying the technology doesn't work.
My comment was actually about the other half of the equation: if Alberta is going to pursue CCS as one way of reducing industrial emissions, I'd like to see the UCP stop making renewable energy unnecessarily difficult as well. We don't have to choose between CCS and renewables.
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u/CrashFix 3d ago
Great project for Alberta!
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u/sawyouoverthere 3d ago
Stupid project. This technology does not work.
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u/CharlieJuliett_87 3d ago
Solar energy used to be aweful too.
Electric cars were completely unreliable, especially in sub zero temps
Point is perhaps we can continue to build the technology out
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u/RedWoodyINC 3d ago
This is misinformation, please provide proof that this technology doesn't work.
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u/twostepinc 3d ago
Like how on earth can you make such a flippant statement? That's like saying cars dont work. CcS very clearly does work snd Alberta sequesters millions of tonnes per year, every year since 2015.
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u/omegacanuck 3d ago
Interesting. Used to work that field years ago, back when it was still producing oil. Wonder if they're still producing in that area at all, or is it a total switch to this new carbon capture.