The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL).

Abstract: The province of Alberta is endowed with the second largest oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia in the form of bitumen in oil sands, with established bitumen reserves of 27.0 10⁹ m³ extracted from initial bitumen in place of 286.6 10⁹ m³. This huge resource base presents enormous challenges to produce and upgrade bitumen in an environmentally responsible manner, related to potential greenhouse gas emissions. Extracting this bitumen from oil sands and thereafter upgrading it to synthetic crude oil requires extensive processing using either carbon rejection (coking) or hydrogen addition (hydrocracking). The production of hydrogen for hydrocracking necessitates emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere which contributes in a significant manner to Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions. Enhance Energy Inc. and NorthWest Upgrading Inc., two privately funded Alberta based companies, are proposing a solution by constructing CO₂ capture and a backbone CO₂ gathering and distribution system from Alberta’s industrial heartland area, which is the site of current and proposed bitumen upgraders, to enhanced oil recovery fields in central and southern Alberta for ultimate sequestration of such CO₂. This paper presents an overview of the project which is scheduled for operation in late 2013. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]