Carbon dioxide storage and monitoring project gets $6.75M extra funding

Regina, SK – The federal government is providing $6.75 of additional funding into research led by the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC). The funding will support the final phase of a project, located at EnCana’s enhanced oil recovery site in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, on the sequestration and monitoring of carbon dioxide.

The first phase of the project, which ended in 2004, was run under the auspices of the International Energy Agency and had 15 public- and private-sector funding partners. The report from the initial phase, released in September 2004, concluded that geological conditions in the field are favourable for long-term storage of CO(2) and that injecting CO(2) underground also enhanced the recovery of oil from the partially depleted reservoir.

The final phase will broaden the scope of the project by providing information to public policy-makers to allow them to define regulatory frameworks. It will also provide information that will allow government and industry to assure the public that geological CO(2) storage is safe and secure for the long term.

“The final phase will look at refining these methods and technologies, with the aim of reducing costs for both storage and enhanced oil-recovery techniques,” says Mike Monea, executive director of the PTRC. "At the same time, the final phase will involve expanding the Weyburn dataset and applying it to the development of a unique, world-class risk assessment database that can be used to critically assess the feasibility of geological CO(2) storage at any other site in the world.”

The Regina-based PTRC was founded in 1998 by Natural Resources Canada, Saskatchewan Industry and Resources, the Saskatchewan Research Council and the University of Regina. The non-profit research and development corporation initiates and supports projects aimed at enhancing the production and recovery of Canadian petroleum resources by applying innovative technologies and engineering solutions.