My Ten Cents: #Congress_2013 - Day 3, 29 May

It's my last full day in Saskatoon, the 'Paris of the Prairies', where I am attending the joint meeting of the Canadian Water Resources Association, the Canadian Geophysical Union, and the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanograhic Society. It's officially the 2013 Joint Scientific Congress and is the first time the three societies have met together. 

I posted the highlights of Day 1 and Day 2;  today it's Day 3. I'll once again focus on the plenary speakers.

Dr. Garry Rogers, a seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, spoke on 'Earthquake and Tsunami Hazards on Canada’s West Coast'. This topic has next to nothing to do with freshwater but since I live with the Cascadia Subduction Zone I was keenly interested in hearing Rogers.

The west coast of Canada is defined by active plate boundaries and has a significant seismic and tsunami hazard. A reminder of this was the M 7.7 October 27, 2012 earthquake off Haida Gwaii {formerly Queen Charlotte ISalnds] that caused very strong shaking over 150 km of coastline and a tsunami of up to 4 m at some locations. Fortunately that coast is a national park reserve and uninhabited. There is very oblique convergence of the Pacific and North American plates in the region of Haida Gwaii resulting in large strike-slip and large thrust earthquakes. The subduction of oceanic plates beneath Vancouver Island has caused major earthquakes within the Earth’s crust, deeper earthquakes within the subducting plates and huge thrust earthquakes offshore on the subduction boundary. The last great subduction earthquake, a M 9.0 event, happened over 300 years ago on January 26, 1700 and left geological deposits documenting its strong shaking and the large tsunami it produced. Paleoseismic investigations suggest at least 19 similar events in the past 10,000 years. The use of techniques such as GPS, broadband seismic analysis, high resolution swath bathymetry, freeze coring of soft sediments have lead to new knowledge that helps to define this dynamic environment and to quantify the hazard that it represents.

Rogers mentioned that the subduction zone earthquakes have a return period of about 200 years over the past 4,000 years. That means that we are 'on the clock', probabilistically speaking.

Oh, well.

Don White, a geophysicist also of the Geological Survey of Canada, spoke on something more aligned with my expertise: 'The Aquistore Project: Commercial-Scale CO2 Storage in a Saline Aquifer in Saskatchewan, Canada':

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) represents a likely component in international strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Coal-burning power plants are a primary target for this technology. The Aquistore Project, located near Estevan, Saskatchewan, is one of the first integrated commercial-scale CO2 storage projects in the world that is designed to demonstrate CO2 storage in a deep saline aquifer. Starting in 2013/2014, up to 500 ktonnes/year of CO2 captured from the nearby Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant will be transported via pipeline to the storage site. The CO2 will be injected into a brine-filled sandstone formation at ~3300 m depth using the deepest well in Saskatchewan. The suitability of the geological formations that will host the injected CO2 has been predetermined through 3D characterization using high-resolution 3D seismic images and deep well information. These data show that 1) there are no significant faults in the immediate area of the storage site, 2) the regional sealing formation is continuous in the area, and 3) the reservoir is not adversely affected by knolls on the surface of the underlying Precambrian basement.

A key element of the Aquistore research program is the further development of methods to monitor the security and subsurface distribution of the injected CO2. A permanent areal seismic monitoring array has been deployed which comprises 630 geophones installed at 20 m depth on a 2.5x2.5 km regular grid. The objective of this array is to test “sparse array” seismic imaging and to provide continuous passive monitoring for injection-related microseismicity. A network of surface tiltmeters and GPS stations has been deployed which in conjunction with InSAR analysis will be used to monitor injection-related surface deformation. Other methods that are being tested include downhole electromagnetic methods and time-lapse gravity monitoring. Deployment of a fibre-optic DAS (distributed acoustic sensor) system is being tested as an alternative to the costly downhole deployment of conventional geophones.

He noted that the IPCC estimates that subsurface storage could sequester 2000 Gtonnes of CO2 (545 Gt of C). The carbon culd be stored in deep oil and gas reservoirs; coalbeds; and saline aquifers. It could also be stored in the deep ocean or in ultramafic rocks.

The Aquistore Porject, scheduled to go online in October 2013, would store up to 2000 tonnes of CO2 per day from SaskPower's Boundary Dam power plant. The CCS facility costs $600M although a news story listed double that amount. 

White described a staggering array of instrumentation to monitor injection, migration and possible leakge of CO2. Money did not seem to be much of an object!

The target formation, the Lower Deadwood Formation, is a brine-filled (c. 300,000 ppm TDS) sandstone about 3300m - 3400m below land surface. An evaporite forms a regional seal. 

During Q & A, White said that the locals did not seem too concerned about the facility since in that part of the province, oil, gas, and coal operations are just part of the landscape and provide a lot of employment. White said that the plant is getting subsidies; it will also sell some CO2 for oil recovery. But there aren't many 'significant financial drivers' to ensure that these projects can stand alone. In Alberta, he said that carbon credits are currently $17/tonne and in Europe they are about $10/tonne. He also added that the EU was enthusiastic about CCS 10 years ago, but they have changed their tune and banned land CCS. Go figure. 

Interesting to see how CCS fares. It seems to have faded from view, at least relative to five or ten years ago. But then again, I'm not looking for it so it probably isn't there.

Excellent talk by White.

And here is the long version of the presentation I gave this morning:

Download 3B2.6_6716_Campana_Michael_long

I greatly enjoyed this conference. There was a strong emphasis on weather and climate, because of the dominant society, CMOS. But that was fine with me - just an observation, not a whine.

I won't be reporting tomorrow since I will be heading home.

"All generalizations are wrong, including the one I just made." - Robie MacDonald

Comments

[Jack Rider]

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