Heartland Area Redwater reef saline aquifer CO2 storage project

AbstractThe Heartland Area Redwater Project (HARP) for CO2 storage is investigating the technical and economic feasibility of injecting significant volumes of CO2 into the large water-saturated portion of a huge Devonian reef that is capped by a comparatively small oil reservoir, nevertheless the third largest oil pool in western Canada. The reef has a total areal extent of nearly 600 km2, is more than 1,000 meters deep and is up to 275 meters thick. Based on the high water injectivity in the reef, the potential exists to inject sustainably in excess of 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per day per well in the aquifer portion of the reef. Preliminary storage capacity estimates for the aquifer are in the order of one gigatonne of CO2. This storage site has the potential to store CO2 emissions in the order of several tens of Mt/yr from major emitters in central and northeastern Alberta such as oil sands plants, bitumen upgraders, refineries and petrochemical and fertilizer plants. The characteristics of this potential CO2 storage site are presented