‘On the cusp’

With several proposed projects for carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery, industry leaders say great things are in store for the region

By Andrew Weeks

The technology to capture carbon has been around for a while, but like other technologies it has only gotten better. That technology is a boon across the energy landscape and no doubt in places like North Dakota, which has prime natural real estate to store carbon.

“We have an enormous amount of geologic opportunity in general,” said Charles Gorecki, chief executive officer of the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota campus in Grand Forks. The center conducts research in the fields of environment and energy and, with its multidisciplinary staff, works with clients in many places to improve efficiencies.

“We have deep sediment in the Williston Basin,” Gorecki said. “If you can imagine, it’s like this big dinner plate. The layers of geology and millions and billions of barrels of oil and water and everything else provide incredible opportunities to store carbon dioxide. The resource potential is gigantic.”

Numberwise, he said it ranges between 70 billion and 250 billion tons of storage.

“To put that into perspective,” he said, “in North Dakota we emit from our point sources, like power plants and things like that, about 30 million tons per year. And so when you’re looking at millions of tons of emissions from point sources, and having billions of tons of storage potential, you can see that can work out quite well.” continued on page 14 continued from page 12

It is one of the things that make Gorecki excited about the future of energy in the state and region, noting the success in North Dakota has big dividends for the entire country and, to some degree, around the globe.

“Our geology has been proven to be able to store approximately 50 years’ worth of every carbon molecule that’s been produced in the United States,” Leiman said. “So there’s a lot of storage, a lot of capacity in amazing geology to facilitate this type of growth.”

But, he said, North Dakota doesn’t only want to store carbon. It wants to use it to its advantage.

“We’re not just interested in storing it, we’re interested in capturing it,” he said. “We want to be effective environmental stewards, to use it for enhanced oil recovery. So instead of using existing technologies, which might use more energy or more water, we see carbon as basically helping us enhance that recovery.”

As the U.S. Department of Energy explains, enhanced oil recovery utilizes natural gas, nitrogen or carbon dioxide that is pumped into the ground. Once there, it expands to push additional oil to a production wellbore or improves its flow rate.

On the other hand, carbon capture is the process of sequestering CO2 at the source of emission before it is released into the atmosphere. Not only does capturing waste carbon help prolong the coal industry, which has faced challenges due to natural gas production, but it is a boon from an environmental standpoint because of increasing concerns about air pollution and climate change.

There already are carbon capture projects in North Dakota with more projects on the books, such as the proposed carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) project in development at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah, N.D.

The Synfuels Plant itself has captured carbon dioxide for the past 20 years, according to cooperative spokeswoman Joan Dietz. “Dakota Gasification Company’s Great Plains Synfuels Plant has captured more than 41 million metric tons of carbon dioxide since 2000 and sent it to oil fields in Saskatchewan to be used for enhanced oil production, a project we are very proud of,” she said.