Pathways Alliance moves to design stage with contract award
Pathways Alliance members have awarded a $10-million contract to engineering and consulting company Wood to develop detailed plans for a 400-km CO2 pipeline to link oil sands sites with a carbon storage hub in the Cold Lake, Alberta region (OGJ Online, Jan. 6, 2023).
Engineering and field work is progressing in support of a regulatory application later this year for the proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) network that would initially gather captured CO2 from an anticipated 14 oil sands sites in the Fort McMurray, Christina Lake, and Cold Lake, Alta. regions. Pathways plans to grow the transportation network to include more than 20 oil sands sites, and to accommodate other industries in the region interested in CCS.
Wood’s engineering work will focus on the pipeline and laterals. Detail work includes pipe size, materials, design of monitoring stations and route. Wherever possible the line will follow existing pipeline rights-of-ways.
Information will also help inform overall capital and operations cost estimates of the transportation line. With anticipated co-funding from governments, Pathways Alliance expects that $16.5 billion will be invested in the CCS network.
The CCS project is expected to reduce net CO2 emissions by about 10-12 million tonnes/year (tpy) by 2030 from 14 sites, about half of the Alliance’s 22 million tpy goal by the end of the decade.
Pathways is a collaboration between Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., ConocoPhillips Canada (BRC) Ltd., Imperial Oil Ltd., MEG Energy Corp., and Suncor Energy Inc., which together operate roughly 95% of Canada’s oil sands production. It describes this project as one of the world's largest CCS developments.