Monday » July 23 » 2007
Potential greenhouse breakthrough is years away from being adopted
By burning bitumen as fuel and capturing the carbon dioxide, natural gas is conserved and total emissions are lower
Gordon Jaremko
The Edmonton Journal
Monday, July 23, 2007
On paper, Quadrise Fuel Systems, Paramount Resources and Colt Engineering own a technology that will cure big oilsands woes.
The approach promises to cut costs and conserve energy by replacing natural gas with a new fuel for thermal processes of "in-situ" underground bitumen extraction.
Greenhouse gas emissions would be cut because the method would harness carbon dioxide made by burning the new fuel as an industry production tool.
The exhaust would be injected into geological reservoirs, where it would stay permanently after enhancing natural gas and bitumen production.
As a bonus, the carbon-dioxide injections would restore access to natural gas in the bitumen belt. The method promises to help firms including Paramount which had to shut in wells and abandon reserves after the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board found gas production threatened to stunt oilsands development by lowering underground pressures.
As a second bonus, users of the new approach stand to gain emissions-reduction credits for sale on the carbon-trading market that climate-change policy is supposed to create eventually.
Enter MCAST, short for MSAR carbon sequestration technology. MSAR stands for multiphase superfine atomized residue. MSAR is a patented new fuel made from raw bitumen or low-grade heavy oil that resembles paint and burns with exceptional efficiency when sprayed as a fine mist and ignited in industrial boilers.
The Canadian invention is being introduced to big energy users from power plants to refineries by an international marketing network.
The bitumen production method devised by Quadrise, Paramount and Colt adds carbon capture and storage technology, a specialty pioneered by the Alberta Research Council, to the MSAR fuel system.
"We'd love to have seen it being used commercially yesterday," Quadrise business development vice-president Rodger Bernar said in an interview. But in practice the system will likely take until about 2012 to mature into a candidate for adoption by oilsands operations, he predicted.
Industry has to be convinced new methods work reliably over a prolonged period, Bernar said. That takes field tests big enough to demonstrate economic as well as technical advantages, he added.
Quadrise, Paramount and Colt expect to spend the rest of this year organizing an MCAST field test in the Surmont oilsands district south of Fort McMurray.
Then it will take another year to 18 months to build a pilot plant and put it into proper running order. And then two to three years of operating the system in all conditions will be needed to convince industry engineers that the new approach works.
No firm schedules are set yet for either the field trials or adoption of the system on a commercial production scale. The federal and provincial governments are unpredictable factors in the technology development process.
MCAST looks tailor-made to qualify for help from federal funds earmarked for greenhouse gas reduction projects, and for help from a similar program promised by the Alberta government.
The oilsands technology trio has applied to Natural Resources Canada for about $1 million and intends to seek similar help from Alberta when the province clarifies its intentions, Bernar said.
The companies are only asking the governments to cover about one-tenth to one-fifth of the project's total costs.
But the authorities refuse to be rushed.
Just to qualify as a candidate for help from Ottawa's greenhouse gas reduction program, the plan by Quadrise, Paramount and Colt has to clear an environmental counterpart to a tax audit.
The proposed pilot plant is going through a review by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. Formal "screening" of the industrial research plan started July 9 as a thorough check into potential effects on land, air water and wildlife.
Government policy will also play a critical role in determining the fate of the new technology if the field trials are successful, Bernar indicated.
MSAR has already been proven to work in prolonged tests. The new fuel system performed well in a pilot plant for the Joslyn oilsands mega-project north of Fort McMurray.
But the Joslyn trials vented carbon-dioxide exhaust into the atmosphere. Even if the larger MCAST bitumen and natural gas production system turns out to be a technical breakthrough, governments will have to contribute an economic reason for industry to make it a business winner, Bernar said.
Carbon-dioxide capture and storage is expensive. Forecast costs of a collection, pipeline and underground disposal system currently proposed by a consortium of other Alberta industry branches run into billions of dollars. Government help sought by the group is also measured in billions of dollars.
Climate-change policy will only generate significant industrial action by creating seriously expensive penalties for carbon emissions and genuine rewards for reducing them, Bernar predicted.
Projects on the scale of oilsands plants do not lightly switch production methods. "There have to be sufficient economic drivers for someone to proceed," the technology pioneer said.
gjaremko@thejournal.canwest.com
