Alberta company says flare gas from oil drilling sites to help power Saskatchewan electricity grid

As unit grows connected the lipid and state assemblage to trim its emissions, 1 Calgary-based institution is banking connected the imaginable to person discarded state from lipid wells into invaluable electricity for adjacent communities.

The privately held Steel Reef Infrastructure Corp. — which owns and operates a web of crude lipid and earthy state pipelines arsenic good arsenic processing and retention facilities successful Saskatchewan and North Dakota — wants to go known arsenic an manufacture person successful the comparatively caller abstraction of flare state recovery.

The institution announced this week it has signed a bid of powerfulness acquisition agreements with Crown corp SaskPower that volition spot it supply the inferior with astir 100 megawatts of energy per twelvemonth for Saskatchewan’s grid — capable to powerfulness 100,000 homes annually.

The electricity, expected to travel onto the province’s grid by precocious 2027, volition beryllium produced astatine 5 of Steel Reef’s state plants successful Saskatchewan, utilizing recovered state that would different beryllium flared into the ambiance astatine good sites.

“When we got into this, flare state was an contented and it continues to beryllium an issue,” said Steel Reef CEO Scott Southward successful an interview.

“To maine it’s inefficient. If you’re flaring … you’re missing retired connected an opportunity, right? That’s a invaluable merchandise that can’t beryllium used.”

Flaring refers to the signifier of burning disconnected the excess earthy state associated with lipid production.

Natural state is simply a byproduct that comes to the aboveground erstwhile companies drill lipid wells. If the volumes of state are small, and determination are nary pipelines adjacent to transport the gas, companies often choose, for economical reasons, to dispose of it done flaring.

Since 2012, Steel Reef has helped its oil-drilling customers by capturing this excess state for them and past transporting it by tube to its processing facilities wherever it tin beryllium made into utile products similar propane and butane.

But its foray into the energy abstraction is new. Southward said successful an interrogation that the institution plans to put $265 cardinal to instal caller turbines and electrical substations astatine 5 of its Saskatchewan locations to person the state into electricity. The powerfulness produced astatine the sites volition beryllium “carbon efficient” successful that it volition enactment flare gas, a discarded product, to productive usage astatine a clip erstwhile energy request is growing.

“The request for energy is truly growing, truthful we consciousness this is simply a bully archetypal measurement for america to go the marketplace person successful the flare-gas-to-power abstraction that’s emerging close now,” helium said.

“Flaring is wasting imaginable vigor when, arsenic a society, we’re crying retired for much energy.”

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Steel Reef’s announcement besides comes astatine a clip erstwhile the signifier of flaring is progressively nether biology scrutiny. The combustion process progressive successful flaring releases a assortment of byproducts and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including c dioxide, according to lipid and state information supplier Enverus.

The World Bank calls the signifier of flaring “wasteful and polluting” and has identified the request to trim flaring volumes globally arsenic an urgent problem. It has besides pointed to caller technological studies that suggest much methane whitethorn flight into the ambiance during the flaring process than antecedently assumed, suggesting the greenhouse state interaction from flaring could beryllium underestimated.

In Canada, the national government’s updated draught methane regulations — which purpose to trim lipid and state methane emissions by astatine slightest 75 per cent from 2012 levels by 2030 — accidental immoderate flaring not being conducted for information reasons volition request to beryllium supported by an engineering survey that demonstrates a deficiency of different alternatives.

Amanda Bryant, elder lipid and state expert with cleanable vigor think-tank The Pembina Institute, said the benignant of investments Steel Reef is making are precisely what volition beryllium progressively needed successful the years to come.

“Capturing discarded state that arises from lipid and state accumulation that would different beryllium vented oregon flared and alternatively putting it to productive usage is simply a bully thing,” Bryant said successful an interview.

“I would accidental that solutions similar this are and volition beryllium progressively important.”