A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.
The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground.
Cameron and Jane Kerr own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan. They released a consultant’s report Tuesday that links high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus (TSX:CVE) in an attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.
“We knew, obviously, there was something wrong,” said Jane Kerr.
However, this is not to suggest that all planet-saving sequestration projects are unsuccessful. There’s still no sign of Dorothy Halton bubbling to the surface.
Update, from the comments;
I am a geologist who mapped the Weyburn field at the time it was undergoing CO2 injection. There are multiple, layered reservoirs of dolomite, separated vertically by thin, non-permeable rock and limited laterally by facies changes and local erosional events. Where the gas goes cannot be predicted with any detail. It is possible that a portion has been jammed into one pod and built up pressures greater than the caprock could stand. There are also small faults that rise to the surface or near-surface, visible in seismic: an unsealed fault could be the problem here.
At the same time, the fellow dug a gravel pit. He could be releasing underlying “swamp” gas from buried post-glacial muds, sands and wood. There are also shallow coals below the glacial gravels: they could be the source of the gas. I’m more experienced in field foolishness to assume that old garbage dumps or local sewage ponds/tile-beds have already been ruled out.
The climate warmists blame CO2 for temperature rises as an argument from ignorance: if not CO2, then what? To blame Cenovus for the gas is similar in validity. C14 isotope and composition analysis will straighten this out. I suspect that we will find a surface source for the CO2.
By the way, the Weyburn injection is not a CO2 “sequestration” scheme. It is a tertiary gas-flood to obtain additional oil from an existing, but only partially-drained, oilfield. The gas is cycled back into the ground as more oil is produced. Ultimately, it may be left in the ground, but it might also be captured later for other oil recovery schemes. CO2 is far to expensive and useful to simply throw away.
I figured we’d hear from somebody about this, sooner or later. Thanks, Doug.
wait for it . . . they’ll want to charge extra for the carbonated well water they are providing.
I’d offer to pay for it in carbon credits . . .
Great spot for a grow-op!
All due respect, but if I was a relative of Dorothy Halton I would be a bit uncomfortable at how this story was phrased.
I knew problems exactly like this would emerge the moment carbon sequestration was talked about.
Environmentalism: Preventing imaginary problems by creating real ones.
It’s amazing that those who will invoke the precautionary principal didn’t kill this idea early on. You have the toxic collections of heavier-than-air gasses in low lying places when they finally do get back to surface, but you also have acidification of aquifers. Karst topography anyone? Groundwater doesn’t travel very fast in most rock types/areas, but acidic water does a real number on limestone and carbonate rock.
On the other hand, it will help the crops grow better. Just don’t take your tractor into any low-lying hollows unless its a windy day.
Erik Larsen
[………All due respect, but if I was a relative of Dorothy Halton I would be a bit uncomfortable at how this story was phrased……….]
How?
…..the part where she is described as “a brilliant ER doctor.”
…..that she was brutally murdered by a druggie, government funded, senior envirowacko, whose opinion on a non-existant problem we should/must rever?
It just common sense that if you pump air “of any sort” into a confined area it will build pressure and have to go somewhere. Why don’t these envirowacko big boys see that??
How long will it be before some state the obvious dangers of this poison?
oh yeah, I’d better include the ” \sarc ” lest I get pummeled by the NDP Front, that lurk..
The owners of the global warming challenge (the Left) are the party of unintended consequences.
We (the Right) need to effect some intended consequences most of which will come about not by trying to the work of a god, but rather just take care of business. That way, we will have the money and resources to adapt, adjust and cope with an weather anomalies of which we are having many this winter.
Remember when we had crazy weather back in middle of the 20th century? I am old, so I do.
We used just say … wow … mother nature is sure tossing it our way this year. Then we went about our business.
Climate is NOT our business, it is a backdrop which we live with.
OMG this carbon sequestration and this green stuff….so dumb. Seriously if a space alien landed on our planet he would be shocked at the stupidity. SHOCKED.
I’m with Erik on this one. What does a murder victim have to do with a possible eco-oops story? I realize that zombies are the new craze replacing vampires but I think Kate you were a bit tacky on this one. Just my humble opinion.
That’s just too sweet …. que the lawsuits and let havoc fly ….. I think the Kerrs have discovered the answer to the question ….. “What use is an stupid solution to a non existant problem?”
Well Tex and Erik the murderer is an ecofreak and as such likes to bury things he hates. He doesn’t like CO2 and thus buries it. He didn’t like his wife so he buried her too. Unfortunately for everyone the buried gas has come back out of the ground unchanged. Unfortunately for his now dead wife and family she will not come out of the ground unchanged ever again.
Thanks Kate for bringing up this CCS issue
This has been a crock from the word go. Its all about subsidies and the carbon market which has crashed. Google Alberta 2bill on CCS.
Everybody is paying for this via their utility bills. The oil industry is charging you for it ,but here is quick energy cost analysis for some perspective.
‘Clean Coal’, or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), will make coal-fired power production 50-90% more expensive
http://www.ekopolitan.com/climate/five-reports-upcoming-costs-electricity-clean-coal
I don’t want to do a link dump here but google CCS technology and see what they have to do to make CO2 a liquid,pump and transport it ,, then babysit it.
The oil industry will use CCS for oil recovery ,,,if you pay for it
It’s nuts
Maybe there will be a climate holocaust after all, when the carbon dioxide mine blows up.
The consultant lost me with one comment: “All reservoirs leak.” This is patently false, or nothing would hold the nice hydrocarbons we like so much, because they would’ve been replaced by water over the millions of years of their development. Similarly for the aquifers holding precious, precious water.
He also made it sound like it’s one, continuous anhydrite forming the cap, and that’s it. It’s not. There are no fewer than three anhydrite horizons above the Midale Beds, from which these Weyburn reservoirs are likely producing. It’s like interlocking layers of barricades.
In addition to the various anhydrite beds…which have zero permeability…there are numerous geological horizons that are just dense rock (also known as “tombstone”), through which no fluid will flow, even under pressure. The rock would fracture first. It just beggars the mind thinking of how the gas would percolate to surface. Under natural conditions, there would really be no way for this gas to come to surface through the intervening 1400+ metres of rock. The pressure it’s being injected with I would guess is rather less than the original reservoir pressure, which would be about 6-10 thousand kPa, IIRC, for that area, so that is unlikely to be the cause.
There are two ways that gas could come to surface, if indeed that’s its origin (isotope analysis does tend to be pretty specific–it’s a useful analysis tool to determine if reservoirs are connected): fractures in the rock or problems with the well-bores or surface equipment. If it were just fractures, they’d be getting oil and methane seeps as well. Karsting at that depth would be unlikely to be noticed at the surface, unless the karsting created a problem with the well-bore integrity.
It might be the well 2km away, but it doesn’t have to be. There just has to be a bad cement job somewhere that lets the gas into the surface aquifer–or a workover cracked something–and up comes a bubblin’ CO2. It’s not uncommon, given that many of the wells in the area were drilled over fifty years ago. Didn’t worry so much about good cement jobs back then…just had to be “good enough”…and equipment gets old and breaks. (A surface-equipment problem is unlikely, as that would probably not have shown up on their land, given the stated distance from the nearest well.)
As to CCS as a concept, in my view it’s kind of like this: the oil companies knew the concept of miscible flood would work to enhance recovery, but they got the gov’t involved so they wouldn’t have to bear the entire R&D cost themselves. For them, it’s like getting paid twice. The gov’t loves it, because they can use it to shill a greener agenda, plus they get money back from the royalties coming from increased production on these reservoirs. For them, it’s like getting paid twice. Environmental concerns are actually lip service for both.
I understand there are a lot of small dead animals as a result of this.
What does a murder victim have to do with a possible eco-oops story?
More than one eco-cultist has sequestered their “loved” one. I like to remind people of it.
I wonder what Coca-cola’s annual consumption of CO2 is. Maybe the CO2 would be better recycled.
Or left in the bloody atmosphere.
I am a geologist who mapped the Weyburn field at the time it was undergoing CO2 injection. There are multiple, layered reservoirs of dolomite, separated vertically by thin, non-permeable rock and limited laterally by facies changes and local erosional events. Where the gas goes cannot be predicted with any detail. It is possible that a portion has been jammed into one pod and built up pressures greater than the caprock could stand. There are also small faults that rise to the surface or near-surface, visible in seismic: an unsealed fault could be the problem here.
At the same time, the fellow dug a gravel pit. He could be releasing underlying “swamp” gas from buried post-glacial muds, sands and wood. There are also shallow coals below the glacial gravels: they could be the source of the gas. I’m more experienced in field foolishness to assume that old garbage dumps or local sewage ponds/tile-beds have already been ruled out.
The climate warmists blame CO2 for temperature rises as an argument from ignorance: if not CO2, then what? To blame Cenovus for the gas is similar in validity. C14 isotope and composition analysis will straighten this out. I suspect that we will find a surface source for the CO2.
By the way, the Weyburn injection is not a CO2 “sequestration” scheme. It is a tertiary gas-flood to obtain additional oil from an existing, but only partially-drained, oilfield. The gas is cycled back into the ground as more oil is produced. Ultimately, it may be left in the ground, but it might also be captured later for other oil recovery schemes. CO2 is far to expensive and useful to simply throw away.
Doug Procter
I was hoping someone with some inside info and expertise would show up. I have a few questions if you don’t mind.
What zone are they injecting/producing? And what is the approximate TD of the average producer?
Texas Canuck
Thanks for asking that question. I just got my eyes opened a little more.
So there’s this huge hysteria in dealing with anthropological CO2…
I can’t believe it! I mean it’s so obvious- why can’t these scientists, engineers, climatoligists see it: Just Burn it! …Like, Outa Sight, Outa Mind! :~D)
Now, how do I apply for that grant?
Another Calgary Marc/ Doug Proctor:
(Sorry, just screwing around).
Seriously, appreciate the technical expertise.
The CO2 being injected- now is this pure CO2, or generally a gaseous mixture of 30%, 80%, ..??
Thanks
Thanks, Doug.
Coutts sequestered himself.
http://www.ergogenics.org/coutts.html
Too bad he didn’t do it earlier and spare the good doctor’s life.
Doug Proctor – thanks for the comments. The article states that the study that the Kerrs had paid for did an isotope analysis of the carbon that found that the bubbling gasses were likely those from the injection. I’m usually more interested in dewatering areas before we mine them than getting into groundwater hydrology, but if the water were saturated and acidic, wouldn’t it eat some of the dolomite? I would have thought that it should take far longer than a couple of years to get anywhere near surface, that’s the equivalent of an explosion in geologic terms for how fast it happened (if true).
(a little fact sheet on dolomite aimed at non-geologists can be found at http://spectrum.troy.edu/~barwood/Dolomite.htm one of several online references that I found that talks about CO2-carbonic acid gradually eating formations.)
I suggest we inject the environmentally ill with CO2 until they fart oxygen and crap diamonds.
It’s worth a shot.
Apparently EnCana has sunk about $1-billion into this project. What a waste.
“The pressure it’s being injected with I would guess is rather less than the original reservoir pressure, which would be about 6-10 thousand kPa”
At that pressure would it change phase or is it too hot down there?
What kind of pump is used?
“I am a geologist who mapped the Weyburn field…”
I am always amazed at how many interesting, intelligent and worldly people are reading Kate’s blog.
Kate, your blog has surely got to be one of the coolest places on the Internet. So much for the usual theory that conservative blogs are only read by unworldly, uneducated dummies.
ChrisinMB: Miscible flood isn’t my expertise, but reservoir temp at those depths is only about 60 degrees C, IIRC (been a couple years since I worked the area). I’m not sure about phase change, but I think it goes down as a gas and stays a gas (someone with more knowledge can feel free to correct me). It should mix completely with the oil, which would reduce its viscosity and make it easier to pump out; at least, I think that’s the theory. I have no idea about the mechanics of the pump. As a side note, I don’t know if the pressure added from the injection would contribute significantly, or at all.
I’m not trying to start a fight. But if my sister or whatever was murdered by a nutbar, the last thing I’d like to read was something about her “bubbling to the surface”. Cheers.
Thanks Another Marc. Just trying to visualize the process.
Initially I assumed the CO2 simply displaced the oil somehow, like an air over oil hydraulic system. Being it is absorbed in the recovered oil it is hard to see how this can be considered much of a “carbon capture”
@ doninamore…
Not sure if you noticed your link stated:
“Professionally, he was an expert on climate change, who spoke at panels and forums.”
Without kicking a man too much while he is down – that should have been the first clue of mental instability…
You’re welcome, Chris (for what it’s worth). Your comment, though, is actually how water-flooding works. Pump water downhole, and the pressure front pushes the oil through the pores to another well downrange. That does have an effect of pressure increase (temporary) within the reservoir.
As for the capture part, if you don’t pump it back, it stays down. Generally. But that’s where Doug was talking about recycling the CO2 to keep using it.
Syncrodox: I’m pretty sure they’re injecting/producing the Mississippian-age Midale Beds. There are a couple of producing horizons within these beds (Marly and Vuggy), as that’s what got the area on the petroleum map initially. Those are the most-likely targets. They could also be producing Frobisher oil or something deeper, but I don’t think those are the right candidates for this kind of injection. Vertical TD for the wells are probably in the range stated in the article; these targets would be shallower to the east. Horizontal wells would be in the 2-3000m range for TD, but the vertical depth would be about the same.
Another Calgary Marc
Thanks. So the premise is that C02 injected at 7500 feet is percolating to surface…or at least into the groundwater?
All the comments! Great! As for the questions:
The productive zones are, as another stated, the top Mississippian carbonate beds of the Midale, Frobisher, and Hastings. The beds themselves have lower and upper names with local names. The depths are about 7500’/2000m. The oil pools are actually mostly an oil-water mix, requiring high volume inflow to get the volumes that, when separated, are worth the daily expense in getting the oil. The water is reinjected. Over time the pool pressure has declined, however, as the oil volumes were not/are not typically replaced, and the dissolved gas (“solution gas”) is burnt off at surface as it is of a volume and quality that make it uneconomic to collect, clean and transport. These days the rules for collecting solution gas are more stringent, but the gas is typically still sold, rather than re-injected, as reinjection is expensive. Even with a strong water-drive to push the water-oil emulsion to the wellbores, primary recoveries are only 25-35%, which is why secondary, tertiary and horizontal wells (a quaternary technique?) are used. There is still 65 – 75% of the original oil in place, but all the infrastructure and data control has been created.
CO2 is injected as a liquid phase from pressurized vessels, but of course becomes gassy down the pipe. In the formation it exists as a gas, a liquid where pressures are high enough, and a mixed liquid within oil. Like CO2 in a pop can. Near the producing wellbore it can start to “breakout” and become a gassy “push” to get the emulsion into the wellbore. Up the wellbore, where pressures decrease, it continues to degas from the emulsion, decreases the density of the emultion and speed its movement up to surface. At the surface CO2 comes naturally out of the mixture, is captured and send down collection pipes at low pressure to be collected and reinjected with high pressure pumps. The CO2 is not a mixture of gases. Other gases like nitrogen might sound like they should be used, but they don’t dissolve in oil and they require very high refrigeration power and strong containment vessels. CO2 is a fabulous work gas.
Although the article said that the gas was from the injection, I’d wait a while. As noted, escape from such depths is unusual. What can happen, however, is that a nearby well has a cement wall-pipe surface break, resulting in a behind-pipe leakage up to the near surface. Very shallow surface casing is set which generally is very good, but which means that any gas that comes up “behind pipe” heads sideways into the shallow formations. The farmer has a gravel pit; it is quite possible that nearby wells have surface pipe set in permeable gravels or sands.
Cenovus/Encana are making a zillion dollars from this project. All the wells, collection systems etc. were already in place. The rock is happy to produce huge volumes of fluid, provided there is an energy source to push the fluid around. The big concern at the time was that the CO2 would create an acidic vapour and damage non-stainless steel equipment, but perhaps that fear did not come to pass.
Carbon capture: the CO2 is not from air, but from some other process, especially from the production of high-CO2 and high-sulphur oil and gas from deep (3000+m wells). Instead of venting it, the gas is collected. Eventually the CO2 will be left in the Great Underground,as each time it cycles through the system there is a loss to the reservoir rock. CO2 injection would be a carbon credit that makes money. There is probably some additional tax benefit.
An interesting piece on massive releases of Co2 from African lakes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
I have it on good authority from another geologist that if we just ‘hold our farts’ everything will be okay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktgujXzj8-0
‘Seriously if a space alien landed on our planet he would be shocked at the stupidity.’
‘I like to call them Space Mexicans’~Stephan Colbert
me too
Perhaps it would be safer to store the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Let our plants have the CO2 – they barely have enough as it is. Remember, if our plants starve, so do we.
The CO2 comes from Dakota Gasification Co. in Beulah, North Dakota. The plant there turns coal into natural gas & other byproducts. This provides a win/win situation as DGC gets paid for what they otherwise would consider waste, and Cenovus gets a cheap source of CO2 for producing more oil from a mature field.