Technology Collaboration Critical Step Towards Commercial Deployment

Washington, D.C. – The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum has added five new carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects to its existing research and development portfolio in an ongoing effort to bring together developed and developing nations in a collaborative quest to curtail anthropogenic emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

The new projects were approved at the CSLF’s Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Washington, D.C., and bring the total number of recognized projects over the past 10 years to nearly 40. Twelve of these projects have been successfully completed.

These projects provide the basis for international information sharing on some of the most important projects throughout the world covering all aspects of CCS. All are aimed at gathering the knowledge and experience required to initiate widespread carbon capture and to conduct safe, secure geologic storage on the order of thousands of years.

Currently the CSLF portfolio includes pioneering activities to identify potential storage capacities and projects dedicated to matters such as cutting the costs of CO2 capture technology and developing new methods of combustion; identifying storage capacity and widening the understanding of geologic reservoirs; predicting the behavior of stored carbon in various kinds of reservoirs; and developing technologies for successful, reliable and long-term monitoring, measurement and verification of stored carbon.

Most projects serve several purposes and a number capitalize on the concept of using CO₂ storage to augment energy production as with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and methane recovery from unmineable coal seams.

The projects in the portfolio report progress regularly to the CSLF and results are available to all members, stakeholders and others through the CSLF website. In return, the projects receive global visibility.

The five new projects include:

• Uthmaniyah CO₂-EOR Demonstration Project
  This large-scale project, located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, will capture and store approximately 800,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year from a natural gas production and processing facility, and will include pipeline transportation of approximately 70 kilometers to the injection site (a small flooded area in the Uthmaniyah Field). The objectives of the project are determination of incremental oil recovery (beyond water flooding), estimation of sequestered CO₂, addressing the risks and uncertainties involved (including migration of CO₂ within the reservoir), and identifying operational concerns. Specific CO₂ monitoring objectives include developing a clear assessment of the CO₂ potential (for both EOR and overall storage) and testing new technologies for CO₂ monitoring. Construction of the capture facility and the pipeline is underway. The project duration is expected to be 4-5 years total, starting in 2013/2014.

• Alberta Carbon Trunk Line Project
  This large-scale fully-integrated project will collect CO₂ from two industrial sources (a fertilizer plant and an oil sands upgrading facility) in Canada’s Province of Alberta industrial heartland and transport it via a 240-kilometer pipeline to depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs in central Alberta for utilization and storage in EOR projects. The pipeline is designed for a capacity of 14.6 million tonnes CO₂ per year although it is being initially licensed at 5.5 million tonnes per year. The pipeline route is expected to stimulate EOR development in Alberta and may eventually lead to a broad CO₂ pipeline network throughout central and southern Alberta. Pipeline right-of-way clearing began in February 2013 with commissioning expected in 2014 and start of operations in 2015. When in full operation, this will be the world’s largest CCS project in terms of capacity.
• Kemper County Energy Facility
  The Kemper County Energy Facility, located in the U.S. state of Mississippi, will use innovative Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology and low cost lignite to provide affordable, clean and efficient energy for decades. Because the Kemper facility will be equipped with state-of-the-art carbon capture technology, emissions from the facility are a fraction of what a traditional coal facility would emit as Kemper is expected to capture at least 65 percent of the carbon dioxide produced. The Transport Integrated GasificationTM (TRIG) technology being used, when combined with carbon capture technology, produces more power and offers lower operation and maintenance cost than what is possible with other available gasification technologies. TRIG technology can utilize lignite, a form of low-rank coal which accounts for more than half of the world's vast coal reserves. As an air-blown IGCC process for power generation, it offers a simpler method for use of low-rank coal than most existing coal-gasification technologies.
• Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) Development Phase Project
  This large-scale project is designed to inject one million metric tons of carbon dioxide during a span of roughly four years. This project leverages existing enhanced oil recovery operations to inject CO₂ into a small number of oil fields located within a carbonate pinnacle reef complex in order to assess potential storage capacity, validate static and numerical models, identify cost-effective monitoring techniques, and develop system wide information to further understanding of other similar rock formations throughout the region. The MRCSP is a multi-year research program led by Battelle to identify, test and further develop the most effective approaches to CO₂ utilization and storage in nine states within the Midwest and Northeast. Previous small-scale tests in the region have demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of CO₂ storage, however, more remains to be done to prove viability at a commercial scale.
• Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) Phase III Anthropogenic Test and Plant Barry Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Project
  The SECARB Anthropogenic Test is the largest pilot project of a fully-integrated pulverized coalfired CCS project in the United States to date, pulling together components of capture, transportation, subsurface storage, and monitoring, verification, and accounting. As a first-of-its-kind project, this test will be very important for understanding the challenges power plant capture can present to the emerging field of geologic CO₂ storage. Project partners include Southern Company, Denbury Resources, and others.