The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line System is the largest carbon capture, utilization and storage system in the

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. The system, which cost 1.2 billion Canadian dollars, captures

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

from industrial emitters in the

Alberta's Industrial Heartland Alberta's Industrial Heartland (also known as Upgrader Alley or the Heartland) is the largest industrial area in Western Canada and a joint land-use planning and development initiative between five municipalities in the Edmonton Capital Region to a ...

and transports it to central and southern Alberta for secure storage in depleting oil reservoirs as part of

enhanced oil recovery Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR), also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted after primary and secondary recovery methods have been completely exhausted. Whereas primary and se ...

projects. The carbon capture infrastructure, the pipeline itself (called the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line), and the downstream recovery project are each owned by a member of a consortium that includes Wolf Midstream and Enhance Energy, among others. It began operations on June 2, 2020.

Background

Plans for the pipeline itself began in 2004 but were interrupted by the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of market decline in economies around the world that occurred from late 2007 to mid-2009.

of 2008. However, in September 2010, the

Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC; ; ''AEIC'') is an agency of the Government of Canada responsible for federal environmental assessment process of major projects. The agency assesses the environmental and socio-economic impacts of m ...

approved the project and a license for construction and operation was issued in April 2011. The pipeline was originally planned to start production in 2013 but its construction was delayed repeatedly. Finally, Wolf Midstream built it between 2018 and 2020 and began operations in 2020. It was partially financed through federal programs like the Eco Energy Innovation Initiative and the

Clean Energy Fund Clean may refer to: * Cleaning, the process of removing unwanted substances, such as dirt, infectious agents, and other impurities, from an object or environment * Cleanliness, the state of being clean and free from dirt Arts and media Music Al ...

of Stephen Harper's administration which provided sixty-three million Canadian dollars, the Province of Alberta through its

Carbon Capture and Storage Funding Act Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

of 2009 which approved 223 million Canadian dollars, and the

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB; ), operating as CPP Investments (), is a Canadian Crown corporation established by way of the 1997 ''Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act'' to oversee and invest the funds contributed to and h ...

which provided 305 million Canadian dollars.

The system

The intake part of the system is North West Redwater Partnership's bitumen processing facility and Nutrien's Redwater Fertilizer facility in the Heartland whose processes use

gasification Gasification is a process that converts biomass- or fossil fuel-based carbonaceous materials into gases, including as the largest fractions: nitrogen (N2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), and carbon dioxide (). This is achieved by reacting ...

. This generates four thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide per day which is transported through the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line. This pipeline, owned and operated Wolf Midstream, has the capacity to transport a maximum of 14.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. The gas's destination is the aging Clive Nisku and Leduc oil field reservoirs, part of Enhance Energy's enhanced oil recovery operation. The Clive Nisku field was discovered in the 1950s and produced about 300 barrels per day at the time the carbon capture system began operation there as the first such system in Alberta. The gas, as well as water, is pumped into the natural underground reservoirs that are being emptied of oil. Pressure from this forces the remaining oil out of other wells in the same reservoir. Enhance Energy expects to recover 47 million barrels of oil at the Clive field, which represents "between 40 and 50% of the total oil in place.

Expectations

This system is part of a planned project expected to include more sources of and destinations for carbon dioxide. Ambitions are that it will store of carbon dioxideper year, six times more than the Weyburn project in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

. Initially, the pipeline transported of the daily but is hoped to expand to of CO₂ per day. It is expected to become the world's largest carbon capture, utilization and storage project.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alberta Carbon Trunk Line System Pipelines in Alberta Transport buildings and structures in Alberta