31 Replies to “SaskPower’s billion dollar bet on carbon capture pays off, for the US, at least”

  2. Carbon capture is a waste of time and money based on the fallacy that carbon dioxide in the air is harmful. We might as well hire people to dig holes and then fill them up. It’s net zero benefit.

    2. We used to do that in the military…dig holes and then fill them up. We got a lot of benefits with that…
      :-b

    3. Tried to explain that to shell at their open house detailing the ccs project planned for the area. Amazing how so many apparently normal folk just go along with something that they know is largely bs. Well otherwise we may not be able to produce oil and gas if we don’t plan this game. Folks there is a lot of power in saying No. There was no enhanced recovery component to this project which would give it some purpose, just shoving CO2 down a hole.

  3. Brian, Carbon capture is not the win you think it is. It’s a pointless exercise that displays our ignorance and ability to waste vast sums of money pretending to do something.

    1. My daughter got a permanent job working for an oilfield company that primarily works in the Weyburn Unit. Were it not for carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery, that oilfield would have essentially run dry by now. She could work her entire career there and it’ll still be producing, because of the CO2. Most people aren’t aware of that.

      1. There are no shortage of oilfields where far more oil could be produced if they were subjected to some form of enhanced recovery method. From waterflood, to polymer systems, to SAGD, etc. as well as frac’ing.

        But at the end of the day, the expense to recover the next incremental barrel rises once the primary recovery mechanism has been exhausted. Carbon capture is uneconomical. It is simply a shell game as to who will bear the expenses for carbon capture. And carbon capture is amazingly expensive. Some estimates place the costs of its development, along with the pipeline infrastructure, as higher than all of the income derived from all the oil and gas produced up until today.

        So producers are gung-ho, so long as “the government” pays or subsidizes CC through credits or some other means.

  4. “Yea!!!! We’re a global leader in carbon capture technology!!”
    Can you use it? “Um, no, we aren’t allowed, but others certainly can…isn’t that great?!?!?”
    How Canadian.

    In good news – Trudeau’s Guilbeault’s coal ban timeline shot down by Japan the host country of next week’s G-7 meeting.

  6. Agree with those above – this is just validates “Climate Change” and every policy/action that is downstream of that lie – such as “the social costs of carbon” and “climate justice”.

  7. How much extra energy is required to operate the “carbon capture and storage” on those example plants?

    I’ve heard up to 30% of the output of the plant is required.

    It would be useful to find out before running head long into administrative made law that requires it, and find out if the cost is work the alleged benefits, other than to green grifters.

    1. BD3 produces a gross 150 or so megawatts, and uses about 27 of that for the carbon capture. But those 27, in turn, are used in enhanced oil recovery and are responsible for about an additional 10,000 barrels of oil per day (based on the share of CO2 coming from SaskPower). So that additional energy needs to be added into the equation.

      1. I barrel of oil has about 1600+ kWhrs of energy in it.
        10 000 x 1600 = 1.6 x 10E+7 watts-hours, or over 16 MWhrs/day, or 16/24 continuous MWhrs/hr, or 650+ kW, at the cost of 27 MW, for an efficiency of 0.025 or so.
        Carbon capture = tulips. People’s propagandized minds give it value that it doesn’t really have in physical reality, it seems.

        1. what’s the net energy value of a barrel of oil instead of the gross (unrefined) value?

    2. I was looking for a term to apply to the climate zealots. Green Grifters will do.

  9. Soon we will all starve after the CO2 minimum is hit; this is insanity.

  10. The carbon capture unit at BDPS has value as a project that proves CC and S can be done and the enhanced oil recovery brings in extra dollars. I’ve heard that getting rid of the acid from sulfur and nitrogen extraction was a headache.

    My biggest beef is that it cost 1.6 billion dollars and produces 110 MW on an old 135 MW unit, so no new MWs were produced for the 1.6 billion. Meanwhile, a new combined cycle 300MW natgas generating plant costs about 900 million which adds much needed electricity to saskpower’s baseload capacity.

    1. Another thing to consider, if we could go back in time saskpower should have built a bigger hydro system like one of its CEOs (Gardiner?) envisioned…but coal was cheaper…now it is nearly impossible to build new, big hydro in Saskatchewan

      If we could go back in time then more pipelines could have been built before environmentalists demonized them.

      Build natgas plants while it’s still possible because it’ll get more and more difficult to build them in Canada. The natgas plants are good for baseload, for peaking, for emergency use and to back up shitty solar and wind power. They also complement SMRs.

      The Trudeau Liberals are posturing about closing them down but it’ll be next to impossible to actually shut down existing plants, for political national unity and economic reasons. Especially when the rest of the world is embracing natgas and LNG.

      1. Oh, I dunno. The gov’t could:

        Keep increasing the royalty rates, but create investment chaos by taking years to determine what royalty formula they’ll use, stopping industry investment in the meantime.

        Keep escalating the cost of carbon, making oil and gas unprofitable.

        Keep piling on more miles of regulatory BS re: the anti-scientific lie of AGW, vastly ramping up the cost of doing business.

        Etc.

        The gas plants might be built, but there’d be no feedstock to supply them.

        Remember, the POS’s who rule us aren’t stupid, they’re evil.

        1. Fortunately, Saskatchewan has it’s own natgas feedstocks in the province and plenty of pipelines to and from Alberta and the US. The sask government owns that natgas electricity generating plants (saskenergy/saskpower) and the gas distribution system (transgas) and the bulk of the other electricity generation (saskpower). There’s no private corporations involved.

          I think Ontario is trying to build natgas plants too. Saying no to Ontario would cost them votes. I can’t see Trudeau saying yes to Ontario natgas and no to Saskatchewan natgas. Even if Trudeau says no…tell him to pound sand and build them anyway. As a separatist, having Trudeau deny the Saskatchewan government, its wholly owned energy companies and the Saskatchewan citizens reliable affordable energy promotes the separatists case.

          1. I can’t see Trudeau saying yes to Ontario natgas and no to Saskatchewan natgas.

            I can. That’s not even a stretch for the asshole.

    2. You’re full of shit.

      BD3 was rebuilt in 2013. It will be in service after you are long gone

  11. A spinoff from ICCS, Estevan is the sulphic acid production. It’s not a headache, it’s potentially fatal and highly profitable.

    Besides pumping CO2 downhole for oil production(if an oilfield company pays for it, it works), sulphuric acid production is the world’s largest industrial chemical with a wide variety of uses, not the least of which the production of phosphate fertilizers. Super-B’s full of it.

    This comment thread is ignorant. Spend some time and learn about real cutting edge science, of which Saskatchewan is the tip of the spear.

    On a side note, every single day ICCS doesn’t produce, SaskPower pays $100,000 penalty. Now ask how badly Cenovus wants this CO2.

    1. Is the acid from the CCS unit highly profitable? Lab people I talked to after the commissioning of the CCS unit said that they were having trouble getting rid of the acid. At that time the sale price would be less than the cost of production. Did that issue get resolved?

      PS – BDPS units 1 and 2 were rebuilt, including the cost of building a new stack but they were decommissioned. I have no idea how long unit 3 will be operational and neither do you.

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