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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You guys are missing the point, first you create a fake disaster, then you suggest a solution.. then you spend billions and billions cleaning it back up after you figure out you’ve created a toxic mess with your solution. Come on! Get with the program here. Hows a guy supposed to get rich off of others stupidity? /sarc off
Carbonated water is acidic and will leach all sorts of nasty minerals out of the rock – toxic things like arsenic that we’d rather just stayed put. The result is going to be an environmental hell; a toxic bubbling mess that will contaminate groundwater for millenia to come.
Who ever thought this was a good idea. The CO_2 would do a lot less harm in the atmosphere where CO_2 usually goes, and where the ecology can easily deal with it.
About two para. before the end of the full article (on the link) the author states “Carbon dioxide is not poisonous, . . .”
Hmmm . . . . gotta love environmental journalists. Their enthusiasm outweights their knowledge to the point of being dangerous, and they are more than happy to exhibit their ignorance at every opportunity. Would it really be so difficult for a journalist to determine the veracity of that statement? Lazy.
The same people who assert that deep geological disposal of vitrified nuclear waste, contained in layers of steel and concrete, bitumen etc, is unsafe and will inevitably escape … happily pump a GAS underground and argue that it will stay put forever.
We live in a moronocracy.
We should believe scientists. In fact, we have to, because they have studied this stuff much longer than we ever could. We’re going to either have to believe the scientists that work for the universities or the scientists that work for the energy companies.
Why would a university scientist have our best interests in mind any more or less than a BP scientist, a Koch Industries scientist or an Exxon scientist?
What would they have to gain from trying to convince everyone that the fuel that everyone including them depends on is running low and is changing our atmosphere for the worse?
It would take a conspiracy theory bigger than a faked moon landing, a covered up alien invasion and a fake 9/11 combined to solve this question on a global scale.
Or it could just be that the money the fossil fuel companies like Koch Industries give to scientists is enough to make them say what they want. Would you say that the Earth is flat for $5 million?
Luckily enough , I need some CO2 for my new Sodastream pop maker , I’ll be right over to save you Weyburn! Only a nine hour drive.
Brent in Calgary
Anthony, Re: “It only takes 8% air concentration to kill you in about 10 minutes”
Weyburn field is a sour oil field. It contains oil, natural gas, and Hydrogen Sulfide.
8% CO2 is 80,000 part per million (ppm).As little as 500 ppm H2S can kill you before you finish inhaling.
CO2 is not a deadly poision gas, H2S very much is. Which one do you think was the more likely culprit to kill some little critters?
Well so we know where to go, when we run out of Oxygen; just sidle off to Saskwatchikan and dig up some of the Oxygen that is stored there along with some good clean carbon fuel that we can extract while we are getting at the Oxygen.
Is everybody familiar with that Franz Kafkar tale about the two towns that are on each side of this river. Everybody that lives on one side of the river works at the only factory in town; which makes marbles; clay marbles to be specific, and they have the finest precision Swiss, or maybe Swedish molding machines in the world to make these perfectly spherical marbles out of finely powdered clay.
Now on the other side of the river, everybody there works at the only factory in that town.
And this factory has the world’s finest rock crushing equipment; and they produce exquisitely uniform finely powdered clay with those machines; taking in their raw material in the form of spherical pellets of compressed fine clay powder; that has been stripped of any form of contamination, so it yields the most uniform grade of fine powdered clay in the world.
It really is a thriving industrial region, and a few entrepeneurs run a fine business freighting raw industrial materials from one side of the river to the other. Most of their shipments consist of either drums of finely powdered clay, or sacks of spherical clay pellets. They do about the same volume in each of those valuable commodities.
They need something like that in Saskwatchikan.
Why can’t they just put the CO2 in a can and bury the cans? After all, we could shield our kids from the fat causing cold drinks while at the same time bottling and storing the bad stuff …
Eduardo Ferreyra says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:54 am
Nobody has ever thought that if gases as radon seep up from the bottom of Earth, CO2 would do the same thing? Don’t they having working brains?
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Err, yes they do. Radon is a product of igneous rocks which have fractures that allow migration. Oil and gas on the other hand collect in sedimentary “dome” shaped structures which have an impervious cap. If it was otherwise the oil or gas would not collect as a deposit.
On the other hand if you take out stuff and then push stuff back in you might get a few cracks in the capping layer.
Ed Reid January 11, 2011 at 12:44 pm says: Here, all this time, I thought the orbiting solar collectors combined with a microwave generator and antenna to beam microwave energy to a ground station for power generation was the #1 stupid idea of all time. Little did I know!
I actually made money from microwave power transmission. Buncha cash prizes for a science fair entry back in the ’70s (don’t tell anyone, but I did that — mandatory in my high school — science fair project as a joke). But orbiting power stations are great for radio pirates: http://www.bussjaeger.org/dj.html
And now our childrens children will have to be concerned about CO2, pools of CO2 lying around the planet, so who’s going down in history for this great enviromental idea.
And whats cheaper to clean up an oil spill or a CO2 spill? like someoen mentioned I guess you pull the plug and run.
As an asthmatic I have an interest in the CO2 levels in the body.
While high concentrations can kill, so can low ones. As I understand it, a CO2 level around the 5% mark is necessary for the haemoglobin chemistry to work in transporting oxygen to the blood and its subsequent release to cells around the body (ref: Buteyko). Asthmatics (who often breathe through their mouth) vent too much CO2, stopping the release of oxygen from the blood and causing that familiar (to asthmatics) sensation of suffocation leading to panic and hyperventilation leading to further reduction in their CO2 levels etc. This knowledge and simple breathing exercises have helped me enormously.
I am irritated. It’s that list of “small animals” killed. To my reckoning, a goat is not a small animal. They’re about the size of a young child, which means this nonsense has gone far enough.
Someone go wake up the WWF. They don’t need another reason to demonize coal as absolutely incompatible with the environment and completely useless, however now that wildlife is being killed and local ecosystems are being disrupted, well, maybe we can put them to a good use for once and stop this madness. Heck, I’d settle for a complaining press release from PETA.
And if this garbage ends up killing a human, now that this evidence of the dangers is out there, there better dang well be at least manslaughter charges filed, maybe even for murder. This sounded risky when proposed, and we shouldn’t have to wait for the subsequent funerals for confirmation. We’ve already seen enough.
Of course, if it fits their agenda(s), this might be a situation where the assorted Green groups, for once, decide that the Precautionary Principle should not apply, it’s worth taking the risk. In that case, I have a question: How do we trick them into locating their headquarters above the carbon sequestration sites?
Henry chance says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:39 am
Obama approved the Future Gen Coal plant in Illinois for his friends. It has both carbon sequestration and incredible cost overruns.
———-
Being a bit deceptive there are you Henry?
FutureGen was started by George Bush, canceled by George Bush due to cost and then restarted by Obama. At this stage version 2 is probably just in planning.
So Henry no agenda driven spin thank you very much.
Ed Reid,
Thanks from UK John, the affair needs a bit more detailed investigation, lots of opinions, but few facts.
Ed Reid says:
“Here, all this time, I thought the orbiting solar collectors combined with a microwave generator and antenna to beam microwave energy to a ground station for power generation was the #1 stupid idea of all time.”
Actually, that will work. Just horribly expensive, inefficient, and dangerous. Which has never been a problem for “those who don’t have to do it themselves.”
CO2 will liquify at about 900 psi (60 bar) and room temperature. Probably need more pressure at depth. So either you need a lot of space to put the stuff or you build a powerful time bomb. CCS. See comment above.
Brian W says
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instant tiny droplets of SULPHURIC ACID. This properly explains the observations NOT CO2. This is just another example of what happens when science becomes politicized
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While I enjoyed you reanalysis about lake nyos this has zero to do with supposed politicization of science.
@R. Gates says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:08 am
Anthony replied in part that “It only takes 8% air concentration to kill you in about 10 minutes. See this hazmat source.” According to the same source, adverse symptoms such as drowsiness begin at 1% and progressively increase in type and severity up to the lethal dose of 8% or more.
I have a question for which I would appreciate an answer from anyone except an alarmist:
Suppose an accepted safe level of CO2 is 0.1% (i.e. 1/10 of the symptomatic level). If the current atmospheric concentration is around 0.039% and emissions continue cumulatively at about 2 ppm or 0.0002% p.a. then, in the hypothetical absence of other influences, CO2 levels would be unsafe in about 300 years. My question is: Are mitigating factors, such as ocean draw down, sufficient to ensure that CO2 levels in fact will never threaten respiration? If so, disregarding imagined dangers of warming, while accepting the confirmed dangers of localised CO2 concentrations, is it a monumentally stupid idea to spend more than one red cent on CO2 sequestration?
What goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up. The first refers to solids, the second to gases.
Pumping of CO2 in geological cavities and expecting it to stay there for centuries and millenia is madness gone worse. One day, many people will die when a sudden massive outburst of CO2 will envelop a town or part of a town, suffocating the lot. It has already happened in Cameroon but from a natural CO2 source. Imaging all that CO2 gas pumped in empty oil wells, cavities etc…..
R Gates CO2 concentrations of 7.5% by volume in the atmosphere is toxic to animals. They were measuring soil concentrations as high as 11.06%. Under those conditions small could easily enter toxic CO2 zones low to the surface.
Another Ian slimes
————
What Flannery rarely disclosed when praising geo-thermal power was that he was an investor in that very technology
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Ian your spinning this to discredit someone. It’s not honest.
Flannery was enthusiastic about the potential of the technology and he risked his own money in an investment.
It’s also unwise to parrot Bolt. You should think for yourself. He is an entertaining journalist, but his self proclaimed intellectual and moral superiority is pretentious.
I also notice that you got shifty and “relatively straight forward” became “straightforward” when you quoted it.
Also the plant is a pilot plant. Pilot plants are meant to pick up failure modes and a corrosion failure mode is a straight forward thing to deal with. It does not affect the feasibility of the idea.
I skipped a lot of comments so apologies if this has been mentioned already, but that area is known for radon gas emissions. Lots of coal seams in the area and so on, measurable radon gas in basements as a result….
So I would be curious if all that CO2 bubbling its way to the surface is forcing radon gas out at the same time…
that oughta get a whole bunch of lawyers all in a twist now….
Well, if my interpretation is right, this is a really foolish thing to do. But, fracking has to be orders of magnitude worse. Let’s not lose sight of the important things. If it’s bad to inject a benign gas underground, it has to be worse to inject hazardous byproducts of a process that has marginal energy benefits.
Be honest.
Bob Kutz scoffs:
January 11, 2011 at 2:52 pm
About two para. before the end of the full article (on the link) the author states “Carbon dioxide is not poisonous, . . .”
Hmmm . . . . gotta love environmental journalists. Their enthusiasm outweights their knowledge to the point of being dangerous, and they are more than happy to exhibit their ignorance at every opportunity. Would it really be so difficult for a journalist to determine the veracity of that statement? Lazy.
————
Gotta luv climate skeptics: they share the same propagandizing tricks with
Econuts.
Bob, the journalist was correct. You’re the lazy one.
Let’s get this clear: poisonous is not a synonym for dangerous.
E.g. Water is dangerous because it will asphyxiate you. But water is not poisonous.
E.g. CO2 is dangerous because it will asphyxiate you. But CO2 is not poisonous.
E.g. Pure nitrogen is dangerous because it will asphyxiate you. But N2 is not poisonous.
E.g. A truck is dangerous because it will run over you. But Truck is not poisonous.
I hope this clears things up for you.