Carbon capture could have billions of dollars of impact in the Lakeland

Could the Lakeland area be bolstered by a massive multi-billion dollar carbon capture project in the coming years?

As the Bonnyville and District Oil & Gas Show continues at the C2 this week, the opening ceremonies on Tuesday night featured Kendall Dilling, the president of Pathways Alliance, as its keynote speaker.

Pathways Alliance is one of several companies worldwide that is proposing carbon capture — a technology that would take carbon emissions before it enters the atmosphere and inject it underground to be stored indefinitely.

It’s one of many projects in the early stages that are geared towards the toward of net-zero.

“We refer to it as our foundational project. It’s one of many projects we’re working on to get to net zero. But it’s the biggest needle mover in and of itself,” Dilling told Lakeland Connect. 

“Alberta is very fortunate to sit on probably the best CO2 storage geology on the planet. And we’re going to develop a hub on behalf of all the emitters in the region, and capture the co2 from about 14 projects, initially, about 10 million tonnes a year, and inject that into the geosphere for permanent storage.” 

This would include some of the most significant investment in the region — ever. To the magnitude of $16.5 billion dollars, it would dwarf oilsands expansion projects that have been seen in recent years.

Dilling believes these types of projects can create another type of boom in Alberta, one that nods towards of future of energy development for years to come.

“It is spread out from the south end here in the Bonnyville area, all the way up to north of Fort McMurray, to the oil sands mines. And a 400 kilometer pipeline linking them, so that work is distributed over a broad area,” he said. 

“We’re talking about 129,000 person years of work just for the construction, which will occur over multiple years. So somewhere in the order of 25,000-30,000 jobs a year for multiple years during construction, and then thousands more in operation.” 

Dilling said this idea is still in early days, providing time for people and communities to ask questions and understand the scope of what’s being proposed.

Right now, they are advancing through the engineering, design, regulatory approvals, environmental consultation, all parts that lead to filing an application. They hope to do that by the end of 2023.

If all went to plan, they project construction would follow after an application approval in late 2024 or early 2025.

“Our target is to have the full project fully commissioned and operating by 2030. It will be a little bit phased, some of the projects towards the south end here, like Imperial Cold Lake and CNRL’s Primrose projects are actually already sitting on top of the storage geology.

“So they don’t have to wait for the pipeline. So you can see some of those projects go earlier, the pipeline itself will be multiple years to construct, and then they’ll tie in the projects for the North. So by 2030, the whole thing should be up and functional.”