CO2 offers hope to Alberta CBM

Alberta could recover 75 trillion cubic feet from its sprawling coal deposits over the next 50 years, with carbon dioxide injections both boosting the output and absorbing greenhouse gas emissions, an industry executive said.

Michael Gatens, past chairman of the Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas and chief executive officer of coalbed methane producer MGV Energy, said pilot projects indicate that CO2 injections could add 40 percent to coalbed methane recovery.

He told the World Petroleum Congress in South Africa that the unproven technology is being put through its paces at four micro-pilots and three mature projects in Canada, the United States, China, Poland and Japan.

Gatens and William Gunter of the Alberta Research Council delivered a joint paper making a case for CO2 storage in coals to enhance coalbed methane recovery while “increasing air quality worldwide.”

They said one pilot by Burlington Resources in New Mexico injected 6.4 billion cubic feet of CO2, of which 1.6 billion is expected to be reproduced, leaving net storage at 277,000 tons.

Gatens reported that coalbed methane production in Canada, almost exclusively from the Horseshow Canyon area of central Alberta, should reach 500 million cubic feet per day from 3,000 wells at the end of 2005.

He said that even at 80,000 cubic feet per day, wells generate a rate of return above 30 percent and cover the costs of drilling and completing a well, about C$300,000-$340,000, in less than three years.

Although the more technically challenging Mannville formation is rated as the big prize, Gatens is confident that Canada can achieve 3 billion cubic feet per day of coalbed methane volumes from just the Horseshoe Canyon.

—Gary Park