Shell’s Canadian CCS Project Reaches Storage Milestone
Anglo-Dutch major Shell’s Canadian subsidiary said July 10 its Quest Carbon Capture and Storage project in Alberta had reached a milestone of 5mn mt of CO2 captured and stored in less than five years.
That mark, Shell Canada country chair Michael Crothers said, was achieved sooner and at a lower cost than expected.
“If Quest were to be built again, it could be built and operated at 30-35% less cost thanks to the improvements made by the Shell Scotford team,” Crothers said from the Scotford site, where he was joined by Alberta premier Jason Kenney. “With Quest, we have shown the world that Canadians have the wherewithal, the ingenuity and the technology to lower carbon emissions and that CCS technology is viable and that it works.”
The volume of CO2 stored – about a third of that produced at Shell Canada’s Scotford complex near Edmonton, which processes bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands into synthetic crude – is equivalent to the annual CO2 produced by 1.25mn vehicles. It is transported 65 km by pipeline and injected more than 2 km underground, beneath multiple layers of impermeable rock formations.
Lessons learned at Quest, Crothers said, have been incorporated into the design of the Northern Lights CCS project in Norway, which Anglo-Dutch Shell and its partners, France’s Total and Norway’s Equinor, sanctioned in May 2020.
The Quest CCS project, Kenney said, is the largest onshore CCS project in the world using dedicated geological storage, with the 5mn mt captured to-date, and its annual average sequestration of 1mn mt/yr is the highest average of any of the 21 CCS projects now operating around the world.
“Exceeding targets for capturing and safely storing CO2 emissions at the Quest facility showcases the energy sector’s dedication to technological innovation and government’s commitment to responsible energy development,” he said. “Carbon capture and storage is working, and Quest is a model facility that others are learning from across the globe to scale up CCS.”