Enhance Energy Inc. and Wolf Carbon Solutions Inc., an affiliate of Wolf Midstream, have announced that the two parties have entered into a project development and coordination agreement related to the construction and operation of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL). The ACTL is a 240-kilometre pipeline that will collect carbon dioxide from industrial emitters in and around Alberta’s Industrial Heartland and transport it to aging reservoirs throughout central and southern Alberta for secure storage and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects.
Subject to closing under this agreement, Wolf will construct, own, and operate the CO2 capture and pipeline transportation assets. Enhance will continue to be the owner and operator of the CO2 utilization and sequestration portion of the ACTL project through its EOR operations. Upon closing of this agreement, anticipated to be within 60 days, the parties will enter into a long-term service agreement and construction activities related to the ACTL project will commence. Initial CO2 flow rates are expected to start at 800 tonnes per day in the fourth quarter of 2019 and increase to 4,400 tonnes per day by the end of 2019.
CO2 will be supplied to the ACTL project by the Sturgeon Refinery (operated by the Northwest Redwater Partnership) and the Redwater Fertilizer facility (owned and operated by Nutrien, the world’s largest crop nutrient company) and delivered to Enhance’s EOR project in Clive, Alberta. Initially, Wolf will provide midstream services only to Enhance, with other suppliers and users of CO2 having future access to Wolf’s capture, compression, and transportation services.
“Carbon capture and storage is already established as a viable emission reduction strategy for Alberta industries and we believe it has great potential to become much more widely applied,” said Gord Salahor, Wolf’s Chief Executive Officer. “The ACTL is a desirable infrastructure asset for Wolf because it represents the core of an expandable network capable of facilitating many carbon mitigation options for emitters over the long term.”
The construction of ACTL will be funded by Wolf in part through investments made by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board of up to $305 million. Additional public funding for the ACTL project of $63 million has been provided by the Government of Canada under the Federal EcoETI Program and the Federal Clean Energy Fund Program, and $223 million in construction funding has been approved under the Province of Alberta’s Carbon Capture and Storage Funding Act (2009). Enhance also expects to invest over $1 billion in capital costs related to CO2 storage and EOR development over the life of the ACTL.
