Employees at Shell Canada’s Scotford Upgrader north of Edmonton, Alberta have fitted the 69th and very last module at its Quest oil sands carbon capture and storage (CSS) project. This brings the capture facilities to 70 percent completed.
So far, construction on the project is on time and on budget. The plan is that the project will start injecting carbon dioxide from Shell’s oil sands operations two km under the Alberta prairie in 2015. The last module was built in Edmonton and now that all these modules are in place, on-site work continues to connect the wires, pipe and control systems.
Quest CCS, which is being constructed by Shell Canada for its Athabasca Oil Sands Project partners, Chevron and marathon, will capture over one million tons of carbon dioxide every year from the Scotford Uprader and inject it deep underground for permanent storage under multiple impermeable rock layers. The carbon dioxide captured would represent up to 35 per cent of the direct emissions from the Upgrader, which is the equivalent of taking 175,000 North American cars off the road.