Strathcona Resources Ltd. (SRL) is pursuing development of a distributed Carbon Capture and Sequestration hub in the Cold Lake region to enable collection and permanent disposal of emissions from its three flagship thermal operations – Tucker, Orion, and Lindbergh.
Combined, these three facilities produce approximately 62,000 bbls per day of bitumen using steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technology. The process is energy intensive and primarily fueled by burning natural gas; consequently, all three facilities are large final emitters and in aggregate emit approximately 2.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
These emissions are mostly attributable to the large natural gas-fired steam and power generation equipment used to support the SAGD process. Each asset uses a different configuration of boilers and electrical supply, resulting in a variety of different emissions sources across the three facilities.
With the help of ERA, Strathcona will conduct feasibility and front-end-engineering-and-design (FEED) studies for industrial scaled carbon capture systems designed for deployment in the SAGD environment.
The goal of these studies is to identify an optimal post-combustion Carbon Capture (CC) technology, then sufficiently advance a modularized and repeatable design that reflects a deep understanding of the challenges, costs, and opportunities that CC represents for each facility.