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Carbon injected underground now leaking, Saskatchewan farmer's study says
The Canadian Press ^ | 01/11/2011 10:22 AM | Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Posted on 01/11/2011 11:03:34 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

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."

"Just like you shook up a bottle of Coke and had your finger over it and let it spray," added her husband.

The water, said Jane Kerr, came out of the ground carbonated.

"It would fizz and foam."

Alarmed, the couple left their farm and moved to Regina.

"It was getting too dangerous to live there," Cameron Kerr said.

In 2006, Cameron Kerr said, the province's New Democrat government agreed to conduct a year-long study to find out what was going on. That government fell to the Saskatchewan Party in the subsequent election and the year-long study was never done.

Cameron Kerr said provincial inspectors did conduct a one-time check of air quality — on a day, he added, with 50-kilometre winds. Then the Kerrs sold some of their cattle and paid a private 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.

As well, Lafleur 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."

Lafleur suggests the carbon dioxide could leak into area homes. The gas is not poisonous, but it can cause asphyxiation in heavy concentrations, which is what Cameron thinks happened to the animals around his ponds.

The suggestion that the Weyburn capture and storage project might be leaking could have implications far beyond one rural neighbourhood.

The Alberta government has committed $2 billion to similar pilot projects in Alberta. The United States has committed $3.4 billion for carbon capture and storage.

Norway has been injecting carbon dioxide into the sea floor since 1996. There are carbon capture and storage tests planned in Australia, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, China and Japan.

"I would like to see it stopped," Jane Kerr said. "I don't think it's doing what it's supposed to do."



TOPICS: Canada; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: carbon; carbondioxide; climatechange; co2; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax
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To: N3WBI3
Gee who could have guessed that pumping a gas undergone might eventually lead to it coming out of the ground?

And I thought the US had the monopoly on idiots.

21 posted on 01/11/2011 11:19:42 AM PST by Cobra64
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To: KarlInOhio

That’s not pond scum, that is “a healthy organic nutrient slurry”. :-)


22 posted on 01/11/2011 11:20:58 AM PST by Army Air Corps (Four fried chickens and a coke)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I remember seeing that movie back in the 1960s!


23 posted on 01/11/2011 11:22:02 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (I visited GEN TOMMY FRANKS Military Museum in HOBART, OKLAHOMA! Well worth it!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Does this mean that Canada can have it’s own perrier bottling plant?


24 posted on 01/11/2011 11:24:04 AM PST by sportutegrl
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

A century from now people will look back on our entire culture and ask how we could be so silly as to think we had the power to change the weather.

Trying to inject CO2 into the ground is going to be laughed at the way we now laugh at people 150 years ago who hired rain dancers.


25 posted on 01/11/2011 11:26:22 AM PST by ElkGroveDan (He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!)
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To: KC Burke
Plants absorb it, die, become limestone

Wrong cycle.

26 posted on 01/11/2011 11:28:08 AM PST by SeeSac
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach


27 posted on 01/11/2011 11:29:29 AM PST by Iron Munro (When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia - Mark Steyn)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach; GraceG
"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."

So true. Such hard rock is most always fractured with pathways for the gas to escape.

Such seemingly simple solutions are in fact complex, costly, and result in unexpected and unintended consequences. Using CO2 for enhancement of crude oil recovery is beneficial, especially if the alternative is injection of fresh water. It is used down here in the oil patch for just that reason. But injection only for capture and storage will be shown that it is not necessary to do this in the first place.

28 posted on 01/11/2011 11:29:30 AM PST by CedarDave (What is DADT? Obama's response when inquiries are made about his birth certificate.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Paving the Road to Perdition, I see.


29 posted on 01/11/2011 11:29:54 AM PST by rightwingcrazy
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To: Army Air Corps; All

Actually I believe soda companies already use some of it that way.


30 posted on 01/11/2011 11:34:43 AM PST by gleeaikin
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

This is all clearly Bush’s fault.


31 posted on 01/11/2011 11:34:49 AM PST by Brucifer (Proud member of the Double Secret Reloading Underground.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

One part Rube Goldberg to two parts scam.


32 posted on 01/11/2011 11:36:12 AM PST by marron
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To: Army Air Corps
Who did NOT see this coming?

Those who created the problem.

33 posted on 01/11/2011 11:37:48 AM PST by JimRed (Excising a cancer before it kills us waters the Tree of Liberty too! TERM LIMITS, NOW AND FOREVER!)
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To: Army Air Corps
That’s not pond scum, that is “a healthy organic nutrient slurry”. :-)

How about "potential biomass source for ethanol or bio-diesel fuels"???? :-)

34 posted on 01/11/2011 11:38:28 AM PST by T-Bird45 (It feels like the seventies, and it shouldn't.)
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To: Army Air Corps

Expensive ‘pop’

Oh well, back to the drawing board.


35 posted on 01/11/2011 11:38:31 AM PST by Razzz42
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
several colours of scum

Great name for a band.

36 posted on 01/11/2011 11:38:45 AM PST by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: ElkGroveDan

You’re absolutely right. I have a degree in Medieval Literature. When people ask me if the medieval world had some crazy ideas I say yes. But those ideas weren’t any crazier than many of the ideas that the modern world has.


37 posted on 01/11/2011 11:39:08 AM PST by Brucifer (Proud member of the Double Secret Reloading Underground.)
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To: Iron Munro
Outstanding !!!

ROFL!

38 posted on 01/11/2011 11:39:40 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Razzz42

With the right marketing, it could sell. “Sparkling mineral water from our farm to you...”


39 posted on 01/11/2011 11:41:53 AM PST by Army Air Corps (Four fried chickens and a coke)
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To: dead

For that matter, the Carbon-Injected Underground would also be a good band name.


40 posted on 01/11/2011 11:42:35 AM PST by beezdotcom
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