From the “nobody could convince them it was a bad idea in the first place” department…
UPDATE: More details now emerging – see below the read more line
The Canadian Press – ONLINE EDITION
Carbon injected underground now leaking, Saskatchewan farmer’s study says
By: Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases that were supposed to have been injected permanently underground are leaking out, killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken-up soda pop.
Cameron and Jane Kerr, who own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan, released a consultant’s report Tuesday that claims to link high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to the 8,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus in its attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.
“We knew, obviously, there was something wrong,” said Jane Kerr.
Cameron Kerr, 64, said he has farmed in the area all his life and never had any problems until 2003, when he agreed to dig a gravel quarry.
That gravel was for a road to a plant owned by EnCana — now Cenovus — which had begun three years earlier to inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide underground to force more oil out of the aging field.
Cenovus has injected more than 13 million tonnes of the gas underground. The project has become a global hotspot for research into carbon capture and storage, a technology that many consider one of the best hopes for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
By 2005, Cameron Kerr had begun noticing problems in a pair of ponds which had formed at the bottom of the quarry. They developed algae blooms, clots of foam and several colours of scum — red, yellow and silver-blue. Sometimes, the ponds bubbled. Small animals — cats, rabbits, goats — were regularly found dead a few metres away.
Then there were the explosions.
“At night we could hear this sort of bang like a cannon going off,” said Jane Kerr, 58. “We’d go out and check the gravel pit and, in the walls, it (had) blown a hole in the side and there would be all this foaming coming out of this hole.”
Read the entire story here
UPDATE: The Winnepeg Free Press has far more details in this story here
He said provincial inspectors did a one-time check of air quality. Eventually, the Kerrs paid a consultant for a study.
Paul Lafleur of Petro-Find Geochem found carbon dioxide concentrations in the soil last summer that averaged about 23,000 parts per million — several times those typically found in field soils. Concentrations peaked at 110,607 parts per million.
Lafleur also used the mix of carbon isotopes he found in the gas to trace its source.
“The … source of the high concentrations of CO2 in the soils of the Kerr property is clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir,” he wrote.
“The survey also demonstrates that the overlying thick cap rock of anhydrite over the Weyburn reservoir is not an impermeable barrier to the upward movement of light hydrocarbons and CO2 as is generally thought.”
It reminds me of this 1965 sci-fi movie:
h/t to WUWT reader AnonyMoose
Update: Reader _Jim finds the trailer:
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Economic Geologist:
Good point. If only more thought like you, we would have way less hyperbole!
Thank you for this article. (bookmarked).
Since CO2 is heavier than air I wouldn’t recommend standing in any low areas, ditches or holes in the vicinity of this experiment.
From Anthony’s REPLY to R. Gates above, January 11, 2011 at 11:08 am
It only takes 8% air concentration to kill you in about 10 minutes. See this hazmat source.
Leave it to the CO2CAGW geniuses to find a way for CO2 to actually do some real damage. We never should have doubted them!
From above, Vorlath says: January 11, 2011 at 10:43 am
“Paul Lafleur of Petro-Find Geochem found carbon dioxide concentrations in the soil last summer that averaged about 23,000 parts per million — several times those typically found in field soils. Concentrations peaked at 110,607 parts per million.”
110,000 ppm = 11% vs ~56,000 ppm ballpark average human body CO2 concentration = 5.6%*, adjusted to that level by “ventilation”/breathing to get rid of excess CO2 produced by metabolism necessary to staying alive, and obviously impossible to accomplish at atmospheric CO2 = 11%; where you’d almost certainly get a deadly CO2 narcosis/coma and acidosis regardless of what the Oxygen concentration was. [CO2 at high levels is “narcotic” all by itself, at least as far as I’ve ever read.]
*I’m calulating % using pCO2 human body = 40-44/760 atmospheric pressure.
I would be very surprised if it were solely CO2 that was injected into the Weyburn oilfield to enable the recovery of untapped crude oil. It is far more likely that compressed air was the major driver.
How was the CO2 (from whence, unknown) collected and compressed, in order to discharge it underground?
BTW, ‘explosions’ normally require substantial amounts of O2.
My apologies, only this sentence was Anthony’s in my post: “It only takes 8% air concentration to kill you in about 10 minutes. See this hazmat source.”
Well, at last I can agree with the enviromentalists, CO2 IS deadly….
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2006/10/30/mine-deaths.html
…..but not when diluted in the atmosphere.
There is something fishey about the timing. Weyburn Sask. is in a deep freeze at present, and buried under snow. When did this story originate?
Someone needs to alert the Hopi and Navajo tribes in Arizona about these poisonous effects to the land and water.
The DOE is contracting with several energy cos and a few members of the Hopi tribe to sequester carbon dioxide in the Black Mesa Basin area. I think the DOE is on the make here. They pay the tribe and the tribe is in a contract; if they back out, they must pay the 5 million dollars for losses to the DOE. The Navajos whose land is also affected were not consulted.
The area is incredibly rich in energy reserves, and pumping co2 is one way of recovering those. What is the Dept of Energy doing?
http://www.navajohopiobserver.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubsectionID=795&ArticleID=12711
@RAYQ MCMULLEN: “I prefer my CO2 diluted in the atmosphere rather than at high concentration at ground level.”
Nonsense. Everybody knows CO2 is hideously dangerous, poisoning the planet!
So it should be treated like radioactive waste, encased in silica and/or in a pool of neutralizing liquid.
Like, say, a sealed green glass bottle filled with India Pale Ale. Cheers!
Probably worth note that with a Conservative federal government nationally and in Alberta that the carbon sequestration gambit has been all about avoiding hard reductions in greenhouse gasses produced by industry.
This is much an own-goal as not for those of us hoping to see the madness and damage stopped or limitted.
And apparently, the world benefits from Canada’s forests effects on the atmosphere but according to Euro-world we can’t get credit for having them, but daren’t cut too many like Europe did. Which in itself smacks of the imperialist hypocrisy behind all this eurocentric BS. We that haven’t levelled our forests like europe has or populated as densely as they have better take notice, we are not to grow as they did.
If it insults those of us developed enough to have modern economies and standards we wish to maintain and grow imagine how it feels to those living much less developed lives. I guess we ‘developed’ nations better start shipping out our money, our bankers and politicians are hungry and the people we are appointing to keep the third-world living in the Dirt-Cookie-Age will need lots of money to defend themselves against their publics when they realize who is to blame.
Foolishness! We can’t get Haiti back onto its knees, but we’re going to provide ‘salvation’ to all the world’s poor with an invented global economy based on crippling humanity’s innovators.
“Carl Bussjaeger says:
January 11, 2011 at 12:30 pm
John Kehr says: “This is stupid, but the orbitting mirrors to reflect sunlight away from the Earth still remains the number 1 stupid idea of all time.”
I thought the mirrors were a fantastic idea compared to lacing the atmosphere with gigatons of extra sulfur.”
Hang on you guys – don’t I remember reading somewhere that the sun wasn’t the *real* cause of global warming?
To have this alarmist Bob Weber from the Canadian Press reporting about a disaster directly linked to the global warming hysteria policies is sweet irony…
IanPJ said:
January 11, 2011 at 11:56 am
.. and what, ultimately, is all this captured carbon for?
To save us from… something, I think.
This seems like a good near-term solution as fossil-fuel power plants are phased out and eventually replaced by renewables, but as with all large scale engineering projects, we have to keep our eye on regulations and safety. Is this problem a single case study, or is this part of a trend?
The CO2 injection would likely have been done anyway, regardless of sequestration concerns, in order to support Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). Oil companies can pump large quantities of steam, natural gas, carbon dioxide, nitrogen or chemical surfactants into the ground in order to obtain higher yield from a mature oil field. Now, I would be more comfortable with steam injection, but I don’t know if that is as viable or productive as the other (seemingly more dangerous) injection techniques.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery
The Energy Return On Investment (EROI) is probably not nearly as good for EOR versus a new oil well. Renewable solutions like wind or solar may have a better EROI than EOR techniques (and I have heard close to natural gas hydraulic fracturing, but don’t quote me on that one).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI
Granted, EROI isn’t everything. A form of energy should be usable and storable. For now, the transportation sector isn’t set up to use lots of renewable energy, but that can change with time. Also, we would need to do a bit of work to set up water reservoirs and compressed air storage facilities to save the renewable energy for peak load times.
Bottom line, we ought to (cautiously) try to sequester CO2, but it may be vastly more effective to not burn the fossil fuels in the first place.
Thanks to those who pointed out the quote from the article that says that Lafleur looked at the carbon isotopes and from this concluded that it was “clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir”. I’d still be interested in seeing the results, and if Lafleur, or anyone else, has fingerprinted any of the near-surface gas reservoirs.
Up is down, and black is white and CO2 increase and/or temperature increase are bad.
You cannot tell these particular lies (the last two) without serious damage to the biosphere.
BTW, 23 000 ppm is only 2.3%. That amount would be harmless/beneficial, but if the average is that high, and variance is high enough (as in this example) you will have places/ occasions where the [CO2] is over 40%, and that will be lethal.
Sequestration is a completely viable process. An oil or gas well that once controlled the releasing of the resource can surely control the imprisonment of C02 so long as they don’t exceed the fracture pressure of the receiving formation, the well casing and cement is in good condition. There are regulatory requirements that determine how these wells are to be checked to ensure casing and cement integrity. Doubtless, something has gone wrong with the fundamental integrity of the injection wells.
I won’t argue that the sequestration is worthwhile. Personally, I believe Alberta’s proposed $2 billion investment would be better spent researching a cure for diabetes.
Richard S Courtney says:
January 11, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Richard, I’d suggest you need to know about this item. Then (depending on your proposed slant) you can quote or ignore!
http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/andrewbolt/index.php/couriermail/comments/flannerys_investment_cools/
Getting “green” power by pumping water onto hot rocks deep below the surface will be not just a blessing but a doddle, claims Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery:
“The social licence of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally… We’ve seen it with asbestos. We’ll see it with coal… There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia’s economy for the best part of a century. They are not being fully exploited yet but the technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward.”
What Flannery rarely disclosed when praising geo-thermal power was that he was an investor in that very technology
Bolt: You’re an investor in geothermal technology, aren’t you?
Flannery: Yeah, I am. Indeed.
But never mind. With the well-connected Flannery spruiking the technology, the Rudd Government gave $90 million of your money to Geodymanics, and promised to make coal-fired power so much more expensive with some form of “carbon tax” that geo-thermal power might even start to make financial sense.
Trouble is, alas, that the technology was not so “straightforward”, for a start, as Geodynamics discovered:
On April 24 (2009), shortly after applying for the Fed Govt grant, the high-strength steel inside the Habanero 3 well broke allowing briny “reservoir fluid” and steam to gush to the surface. ASX releases reveal the 4221m-deep well was only 2 months old. It was to supply the pilot plant, now delayed.
Dissolved carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide in the “reservoir fluid” caused the steel to become brittle. Two other wells were also damaged. Fluid and steam continued to flow from the wells for at least 3 weeks before they were plugged with cement.
All three wells are now on hold indefinitely and the pilot plant is delayed by up to 9 months, according to ASX releases. The company is claiming it on insurance.
And even all the Government’s help hasn’t stopped the Geodynamics share price from going south, along with Flannery’s investment – and his credibility.
Warwick Hughes has some thoughts about the folly of governments trying to pick winners. “
CO2 injection has been used for many years in Alberta and Saskatchewan, there is nothing new here. (Used in Texas in the early 70’s so the technology is now nearly 40 years old.)
Drilled water wells in both these province (Alberta and Saskatchewan) often outgas subsurface gases including CO2, methane, and other natural gases. Some wells contain enough natural gas that you can “light” your water tap, often non-flammable gases outgas from water wells only a few 10’s of metres deep. I have a 50 metre deep water well on my farm that has been outgassing a non flammable, non poisonous gas for 8 years.
Nothing new in this area except perhaps the volume.
I will wait for volume two of the story as it is not unusual for large natural “gas” leaks to occur … and on the other side of things, what I (and every other civil engineer) learned in geotechnical classes, is that there is no such thing as a completely impermeable natural membrane. All soils/rocks leak, it is just a matter of the rate of leakage and the size of the molecules/atoms and electrical properties.
Plant some trees. They should do very well.
PS to last comment: Most of the CO2 that was used in Texas and other areas has been from NATURALLY ocurring CO2 pools underground.
http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=00010128&soc=SPE
For the record, at concentrations of 5% in an inhaled gas mixture , CO2 stimulates respiratory rate in humans and other mammals. At a concentration of 30%, CO2 produces anesthesia with suppression of respiration. This occurs even with the remainder (70%) of the inhaled gas being O2 (oxygen). The ordinary concentration of O2 in air is approximately 20% so the anesthetic effect of CO2 is not due to lack of oxygen. CO2 at a concentration of 30% is used to humanely kill (I will not use the term euthanize) animals such as chickens or rats.
CO2 is quite different from CO (carbon monoxide). The latter is harmful in minute amounts because it strongly binds to hemoglobin, so interfering with the ability of hemoglobin to carry oxygen and thus produces hypoxia.
This reminds me of a recent news about a CO2 capture-and-sequestration project in Norway close to a coal power plant, which was halted (2008 ? 2009 ?) due to health worries ; indeed by products of such process seem to increase risks of cancer for the population.
This reminds me as well of a recent news in the UK of same kind of project going to receivership due to cost overrun.
Just bad fate ?
May i be so bold to suggest a vigourous study be done by our most eminent climate scientist’s,large grant and no computer models on the spot phyiscal study.
Then we sceptics/deniers could video the results “it would quick 8 minutes ”
and post our own climate advert a la 10;10 style with the slogan: “we told you so”
along with dumping nuclear waste in the oceans this was one the dumbest ideas sceince has come up with.