Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project

The Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project is a proposed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project in Canada that would aim to allow the extraction of otherwise unrecoverable oil. Weyburn-Midale represents the largest full-scale CCS field study ever conducted. The project was launched in 2000 by the Government of Canada, the Government of Saskatchewan, Cenovus Energy (formerly called Pan Canadian Petroleum and later EnCana ) and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Project partners
The partners in the project are Shell, the International Energy Agency and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre.

Funding
On July 20, 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) announced that $5.2 million has been committed by the two governments to bring the project to conclusion in 2011. NRCan and DOE will partner to renew funding for the International Energy Agency (IEA) project. The renewed endorsements will focus on carbon capture with enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The DOE is providing $3 million in funding and the Government of Canada has committed $2.2 million. Weyburn-Midale is conducted in conjunction with $2 billion of commercial CO2 injection operations. CCS is a primary focus of research conducted by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) and its National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

In the United States, CO2 injection has been used to recover nearly 1.5 billion barrels of oil from mature oil fields, and the DOE is looking to deploy the technology widely. The DOE claims as much as 400 billion barrels of oil could be potentially recoverable utilizing EOR. CO2 for injection comes from the Dakota Gasification Company’s synfuels plant in Beulah, N.D. and is delivered via a 200-mile (320-kilometer) pipeline. The U.S. is also looking for a large-scale CCS demonstration project, which has yet to prove feasible.

The project has attracted 16 sponsors from government and industry that, aside from DOE and NRCan, include IEA, Alberta Innovates, Saskatchewan Ministry of Energy and Resources, Japan’s Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, and 10 industry sponsors from Canada, the United States, the Middle East, and Europe. The project's sponsors say a projected 40 million tonnes of CO2 will be stored over the life of the EOR operations in the Weyburn and Midale oil fields. For the Weyburn oil field, 155 million additional barrels of oil are expected to be recovered by 2035 while storing 30 million tonnes of CO2 over the next 30 years. They claim the adjacent Midale oil field will store 10 million tonnes of CO2 while yielding an additional 60 million barrels of oil during 30 years of operation.

Funding of 2005-2009 Program
On its website the PTRC lists funders of the final phase of the project as being :
 * Apache Canada
 * Aramco Services Company
 * Chevron
 * EnCana Corporation
 * OMV
 * Nexen Inc.
 * Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE)
 * SaskPower
 * Schlumberger
 * Shell Canada Limited
 * Natural Resources Canada
 * United States Department of Energy
 * Saskatchewan Industry and Resources
 * Alberta Energy Research Institute

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Carbon Capture and Storage
 * Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects worldwide
 * Carbon Capture and Storage in Canada
 * Hydrogen Energy

External resources

 * Petroleum Technology Research Centre, [http://www.ptrc.ca/siteimages/PTRC%20Reponse%20Kerr.pdf "PTRC's Response to the EcoJustice Sponsored Report "Geochemical Soil Gas Survey", Media Release, January 11, 2011. (Pdf)

External Articles

 * Shell, "Shell looks to Saskatchewan, Canada for international research on carbon storage", Media Release, May 14, 2008.
 * Danny Fortson, "Shell's support for carbon capture plant raises hopes for emissions cuts", The Independent, May 16, 2008.