Quest carbon capture and storage offset project: Findings and learnings from 1st reporting period

Abstract

Quest is a fully integrated Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project that started CO2 injection in August of 2015. The Quest CCS Project is located near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. It includes a capture facility which uses a Shell amine technology, a pipeline of about 65 km length, and three injection well pads. Each injection well pad has an injection well, a deep monitoring well, and shallow groundwater wells. The storage complex is geologically defined by the injection reservoir, a deep saline aquifer called the Basal Cambrian Sand (BCS) (about 45 m thick) and several seals, including the Middle Cambrian Shale (about 50 m thick) and Lotsberg Salts (about 120 m thick). As of August 2018, over three million tonnes of CO2 have been safely injected and permanently stored in the BCS. The Alberta Carbon Competitiveness Incentive Regulation (CCIR) requires the use of standard methods of quantification for reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for facilities with over 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year. An emission offset project is required to comply with CCIR, associated standards and protocols, to demonstrate a reduction in the specified gas emissions and, in the case of Quest, geological sequestration. Quest is the first CCS project to implement an offset project in the context of commercial scale on-shore CO2 geological sequestration within a saline aquifer. Quest uses the Quantification Protocol for CO2 Capture and Permanent Storage in Deep Saline Aquifers, from Alberta Environment and Parks. An offset project must develop an offset project plan (OPP) which demonstrates how the project meets the requirement of the protocol, describes how GHG emissions reductions are achieved, identifies risks associated with the quantification of emission reduction benefits, and describes methodologies used to quantify sources and sinks. Subsequent to completing the OPP, an offset project will put together offset project reports (OPR) to report on the net reductions of GHG emissions for a specific period. The intent of this paper is a) to provide an overview of the OPP and OPR for the Quest CCS project, and b) to discuss learnings from the initial compilation and submission of offset project reports. The key learning at this time is associated to the equipment improvements to the injection gas online analyzer.