Technical Luncheons
The Redwater Leduc Reef, A Saline Aquifer – Carbon Dioxide Capture and Geological Storage Opportunity in the Heartland Oil Sands Industrial Area, Alberta, Canada
Speakers:
Bill Gunter,
Alberta Research Council
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 - 11:30 am
Location: Telus
Convention Centre - Calgary, Alberta
The cut-off date for ticket sales is 1:00 pm, Wednesday, May 14th, 2008*
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ABSTRACT
Oil and gas reservoirs and deep saline aquifers in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin have CO2 storage capacities that span several orders of magnitude, respectively. The smallest capacity is in oil reservoirs, including enhanced oil recovery (EOR), estimated to be in the order of a few hundred million tonnes (Mt), compared to Alberta's annual emissions from large final emitters in the order of 160 Mt. The storage capacity in gas reservoirs is one order of magnitude larger, estimated to be in the order of 8-10 Gt CO2. Yet the largest capacity, at least one order of magnitude higher than in gas reservoirs, is in deep saline aquifers. In many cases, deep saline aquifers underlie oil and gas reservoirs, in which case both may be used for CO2 storage.
The identification of early opportunities for geological storage is based on five criteria: 1)Capacity, 2)Injectivity, 3)Containment, 4)Resource protection and 5)Economics.
Based on the five criteria listed above, one of the more attractive plays suitable for geological storage in the Alberta Basin are the Leduc reef complexes of the Devonian Woodbend Group. The Leduc reef complexes in central Alberta are underlain by the platformal carbonates of the Cooking Lake Formation that form an extensive aquifer which provides support to these oil and gas reservoirs. One example of this is the Devonian Redwater Leduc Reef and the underlying Cooking Lake Aquifer in the Heartland Industrial region of Alberta, northeast of Edmonton.
The Redwater Leduc Reef has a total areal extent of nearly 600 square kilometers. It is more than 1,000 meters deep and is up to 275 meters thick. The original oil zone was only 50 meters, confined to the Northeast edge of the reef, and is one of the largest oil reservoirs in Canada. The reef is bounded at the top and on its flanks by the Ireton shale and is hydraulically connected to the underlying Cooking Lake aquifer.
Based on the high water injectivity in the Redwater Leduc Reef, the potential exists to inject sustainably in excess of 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per day per well in the aquifer portion of the reef. While the top of the reef offers the potential for CO2 enhanced oil recovery, the rest of the Redwater Reef offers a very large capacity for CO2 storage. Preliminary storage capacity estimates for the aquifer are in the order of one gigatonne (i.e. one billion tonnes) of CO2.
The Redwater Reef could be part of an integrated system that combines both CO2 storage opportunities with CO2 supply, as the access point to the system is located in the Heartland Industrial region, a major potential source of CO2. Due to the booming industrial expansion in the Heartland Region connected with oil sands processing, the area will become one of the biggest emitters of CO2 in western Canada and in the country. The fact that most of the oil sands processing plants being built in the Heartland area are relying on gasification to supply the hydrogen for upgrading offers an attractive high-purity CO2 waste stream to be captured for storage.
The Redwater Reef may have the potential to store all the current and future CO2 emissions from the east Edmonton – Fort McMurray region for a few decades during which an integrated CO2 infrastructure can develop in the province. A more detailed assessment of the Redwater Reef storage opportunity is currently underway.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. William D. Gunter received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in geology from the University of New Brunswick and his PhD in geochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University. He taught Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology at the University of Wyoming and was a Research Fellow in Hydrothermal Geochemistry at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland.
He currently is a professional geologist practicing in Alberta, and a Distinguished Scientist at the Alberta Research Council located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where he has spent over 25 years of his career, and has served terms as an Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Alberta and Calgary.
His expertise is in geochemical processes (stressing use of field data, experiments and modelling) as they impact on the environment, and on the oil and gas industry. Over the past 10 years, he has been leading combined industry-government funded projects for geological storage of CO2 and H2S in aquifers, oil reservoirs and coal beds. As a result of this, more than 70 publications are available in the public domain on geological storage of CO2, a major contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
In 1999, he served as a member of the Canadian Federal "Technology Issues" Table on GHG emissions. He co-chaired the Canadian Capture and Geological Storage Roadmapping task which led to two reports, CANiSTORE and CANiCAP (addressing planning options for technology development in Geological Storage and CO2 Capture in Canada). Both are downloadable from www.CO2network.gc.ca and together they contain the elements of a plan for commercialization of CCS [CO2 Capture and geological Storage] in Canada, and form part of the basis for the Canadian Roadmap for CCS).
He also was a Lead Author on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) special report on CO2 Capture and Storage, released in December 2005. During 2007, he was a member of the Federal-Provincial ecoENERGY task force's Technology working group.
He currently serves as a member of the Alberta Government's "Capture and Geological Storage of GHG Emissions" working group.
