Carbon capture through innovative commercial structuring in the Canadian oil sands: a project overview of the North West Sturgeon Refinery

The North West Sturgeon Refinery (NWSR) project has been developed to take advantage of the rising supply of bitumen from the oil sands of northern Alberta and the need for refining conversion capacity to produce low carbon fuels with reduced GHG emissions. Since its inception the project has incorporated gasification technology to economically co-produce hydrogen for the refining process and pure CO₂ that will generate a modest revenue stream from sales into an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) scheme. These and other interrelated benefits are described in this report.
The fully integrated project will capture, use for EOR and geologically sequester over 1.2 million tonnes per year of 99% pure, dry CO₂, the equivalent to removing approximately 225,000 vehicles from the road. The CO₂ from the NWSR will also be the anchor supply for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL), an open access CO₂ pipeline being developed by Enhance Energy Inc. The ACTL has public funding which will support the development of a common CO₂ handling infrastructure for EOR in Alberta.
The willingness of the Alberta and Canadian governments to support large scale CCS projects with the creation of a CCS Fund and development of an effective CO₂ storage regulatory framework was essential for the CO₂ capture component of the NWRP and ACTL to proceed.