Posts Tagged ‘Carbon Capture’

Firms announce CCS plans for Peterhead power station following collapse of £1bn proposals for Longannet

From pages 20 & 21 of “Royal Dutch Shell and its sustainability troubles” – Background report to the Erratum of Shell’s Annual Report 2010

The report is made on behalf of Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)
Author: Albert ten Kate: May 2011.

CCS-project Quest

Shell’s Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP, Shell share 60%) is planning a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, called Quest, near to its Scotford Upgrader. The total cost of the project is projected to be USD 1.35 billion. The province of Alberta (USD 745 million) and the government of Canada (USD 120 million) are willing to pay most of the costs. The plant is planned to be commissioned at the end of 2015.

The CO2 will be permanently put under the ground during an estimated 25 years at a depth of over 2,000 meters, in a saline formation, with a maximum of 1.2 millions tonnes of CO2 each year. In a recent report quantifying the GHG reduction benefits from the CCS-project, the facilities were assumed to operate with 90% availability, capturing 1.08 million tonnes of CO2 annually. The full lifecycle emissions of the CCS-project itself were estimated to be between 0.16 to 0.24 million tonnes of CO2, around 20% of the annual capture. Conclusively, the project is estimated to reduce 0.84 to 0.92 million tonnes of CO2 annually.109 AOSP emitted 3.7 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents in 2009110, while its production stood at 78,000 barrels per day. Considering an already planned 440,000 barrels per day tonnes of production by AOSP and in- situ by Shell before 2020, the CCS-project will only partly compensate for the increasing emissions due to deriving fuel from oil sands compared to fuels derived from conventional oil.

Pollution of Athabasca river

A study by the University of Alberta, released July 2010, indicates that the oil sands industry could be the source of substantially increasing pollution to the Athabasca river and its tributaries via air and water pathways. In the period February – June 2008, samples were taken at about a hundred sites. The oil sands industry was found to release 13 elements considered priority pollutants (PPE) under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act. Canada’s or Alberta’s guidelines for the protection of aquatic life were exceeded for seven PPE (cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, silver, and zinc) in melted snow and/or water collected near or downstream of development. According to the authors, their findings confirm the serious defects of the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program (RAMP), which has not detected such patterns in the Athabasca river watershed. Based in part on results from RAMP, the industry, government and related agencies claim that human health and the environment are not at risk from oil sands development and that sources of elements and polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) in the Athabasca river and its tributaries are natural.

Concerns of the Canadian Aboriginals

First Nations is a term of ethnicity that refers to the Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. In northern Alberta, Aboriginal communities rely on the land, water and wildlife for hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, harvesting, navigation and ceremonial, recreational and domestic uses such as bathing, cooking and drinking. The communities are increasingly concerned about the negative impacts of the oil sands developments: − Communities, especially those living downstream, have expressed interest in effective and strong watershed protection. In 2009, seven communities testified that they had significant concerns about deteriorating water quality or river flows in the Athabasca watershed. For example, the Mikisew Cree First Nation has experienced an increased incidence of cancers found in the population of Fort Chipewyan, located directly downstream from the most intensive oil sands development. They fear that this may be due to water pollution from oil sands development.

− The caribou is an important species to many Aboriginal groups, for cultural and spiritual reasons. In 2008, Canada’s Environment Ministry released a report showing that due to cumulative development activities, all caribou herds in northeastern Alberta are now considered non-self-sustaining. The east side of the Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range includes much of the current in situ oil sands development in Alberta, has declined 71% since 1996.

Currently, oil sands mining operations are licensed to divert 604 million cubic metres of water annually from the Athabasca River Basin, which is equivalent to the needs of a city of three million people. As production increases, oil sands companies have the ability to withdraw the licensed amount. Although water use is often presented as a percentage of average annual flows, the amount of water used during low flow periods is of most concern, especially since the water is not returned to the river system after use as it would be with municipal uses. In July 2010, the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations said the proposed Government of Alberta framework to manage water withdrawals would not protect the interests of these communities during low flow periods. First Nations are concerned that water withdrawals from the Athabasca River system reduces river flows, threatening fish populations during low flow periods, and the health of the Peace-Athabasca Delta.

Further extracts from the report will be published in the coming days.

THE COMPLETE 73 PAGE REPORT (with reference sources)

By Ehren Goossens and Jeremy van Loon – Jun 24, 2011 9:46 PM GMT+0100

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) will receive C$865 million ($876 million) from the governments of Alberta and Canada to fund a carbon capture and storage project.

Shell and its partners will receive the money over 15 years, based on meeting certain performance targets, according to a statement today on the Government of Alberta’s website. The province of Alberta will contribute C$745 million and Canada will provide the remainder.

Shell’s Quest project would be the first oil-sands operation to capture the greenhouse gas for an upgrading plant, Shell said. Development of Canada’s bitumen reserves has contributed most of the nation’s increase in carbon emissions since 1990 when output was supposed to begin to decline under the Kyoto Protocol.

“This is the second of four grants finalized by the Alberta government for CCS, so the committed funds are starting to flow to developers,”said Cheryl Wilson, carbon capture and storage analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Washington.

“Quest is Shell’s main carbon capture project after its Barendrecht project near Rotterdam was canceled in November,” Wilson said. The Canadian authorities pledged their support for the project in October 2009.

Alberta has committed C$2 billion to fund four carbon capture and storage projects including Quest, which it says will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 million tons a year starting in 2015.

Slowing Carbon Emissions

Alberta, home to Canada’s oil and gas industry, is counting on carbon capture and storage technology to help slow its output of the gas amid criticism from environmental groups and politicians in the U.S. and the European Union. Greenpeace has said the technology is too expensive to rely on for reducing carbon output on the scale needed to tackle climate change.

Shell and its competitors in the oil and gas industry are not only counting on the technology to allow them to continue exploiting fossil fuel reserves, they also expect governments to help pay for development of carbon capture and storage.

“CCS is recognized as one of the most promising technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels,” said John Abbott, Shell’s executive vice president of Heavy Oil in today’s statement. “Government support in this important demonstration phase is essential.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Calgary at jvanloon@bloomberg.net Ehren Goossens in New York at egoossens1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Wade at wwade4@bloomberg.net

SOURCE ARTICLE

Royal Dutch Shell PLC, for example, is working on a project in the Netherlands, near Barendrecht, and has faced “massive protests,” said Ms. Groenenberg in a telephone interview. Local decision makers quashed the project, but the national government overruled them. The local politicians, she said, may turn to the courts to block Shell’s project.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The Dutch government approved a pilot project Wednesday to pump carbon dioxide into depleted gas fields beneath a town of 43,000 people as a way of reducing emissions blamed for global warming.

The Dutch government aims to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions by developing Carbon Capture Storage or CCS. Royal Dutch Shell has plans to take on this government project but is delayed because of opposition from locals in the town of Barendrecht, a suburb of Rotterdam.

Arrow Energy

By Xi Chen in Hong Kong

Published: August 13 2009 07:46 | Last updated: August 13 2009 07:46