From the Canadian Energy Centre

Pipeline front-end engineering and design to be complete by end of year

Canada’s largest oil sands companies continue to advance a major proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) network in northeast Alberta, including filing regulatory applications, conducting engineering and design, doing environmental surveys and consulting with local communities.   

Members of the Pathways Alliance – a group of six companies representing 95 per cent of oil sands production – are also now closer to ordering the steel for their proposed CO2 pipeline.   

“We have gone out to potential pipe suppliers and asked them to give us proposals on costs and timing because we do see this as a critical path going forward,” Imperial Oil CEO Brad Corson told analysts on November 1.  

He said the next big milestone is for the Pathways companies to reach an agreement with the federal and provincial governments on an economic framework to proceed.  

“Once we have the right economic framework in place, then we will be in a position to go order the line pipe that we need for this 400-kilometre pipeline.” 

Pathways – which also includes Suncor Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, MEG Energy and ConocoPhillips Canada – is proposing to build the $16.5 billion project to capture  emissions from oil sands facilities and transport them to an underground storage hub. 

The project was first announced in 2022 but Pathways had not provided recent public updates. The organization had stopped advertising and even briefly shut down its website during the summer in wake of the federal government’s amendments to the Competition Act in June.  

Those changes include explicit provisions on the need to produce “adequate and proper testing” to substantiate environmental benefit claims. Critics say the provisions could lead to frivolous lawsuits and could or even scuttle the very projects that Canada is relying on to slash greenhouse gas emissions.  

In early December, the Alberta Enterprise Group (AEG) and the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association jointly filed a constitutional challenge against the federal government over the new “greenwashing” rules, which they say unreasonably restrict free speech. 

“These regulations pre-emptively ban even truthful, reasonable and defensible discussion unless businesses can meet a government-imposed standard of what is the truth,” said AEG president Catherine Brownlee. 

Pathways has since restored its website, and president Kendall Dilling said the organization and its member companies continue working directly with governments and communities along the corridors of the proposed CCS project. 

Canadian Natural Resources began filing the regulatory applications to the Alberta Energy Regulator on behalf of Pathways earlier in the year. The company has so far submitted 47 pipeline agreement applications along with conservation and reclamation plans in seeking approvals for the CO2 transportation network. 

Pathways has also continued consultation and engagement activities with local communities and Indigenous groups near its pipeline corridors and storage hubs. 

“Engagement is ongoing with local communities, Indigenous groups and landowners, as well as a consultation process with Indigenous groups in accordance with Aboriginal Consultation Office requirements,” Dilling says.  

An environmental field program that began in 2021 continues to survey the network’s project areas. 

“Environmental field studies are ongoing and we are supporting Indigenous groups in completing traditional land use studies,” Dilling says.  

“Studies are supported by hundreds of heritage resource assessments, wetland classifications, soil assessments, aquatic habitat evaluations and other environmental activities.” 

In addition to working with governments and communities, Pathways expects front-end engineering and design on the proposed 400-kilometre-plus main transportation line and more than 250 kilometres of connecting pipelines to be complete by the end of this year.  

Pathways has also drilled two test wells in the proposed storage hub and plans to drill another two or three evaluation wells in the final quarter of 2024. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s campus in Nanjing, China

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

Canada inches away from first large-scale LNG exports

The world’s leading producer of semiconductor chips wants access to Canadian energy as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly advances.  

Specifically, Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG).  

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces at least 90 per cent of advanced chips in the global market, powering tech giants like Apple and Nvidia.  

Taiwanese companies together produce more than 60 per cent of chips used around the world. 

That takes a lot of electricity – so much that TSMC alone is on track to consume nearly one-quarter of Taiwan’s energy demand by 2030, according to S&P Global. 

“We are coming to the age of AI, and that is consuming more electricity demand than before,” said Harry Tseng, Taiwan’s representative in Canada, in a webcast hosted by Energy for a Secure Future. 

According to Taiwan’s Energy Administration, today coal (42 per cent), natural gas (40 per cent), renewables (9.5 per cent) and nuclear (6.3 per cent), primarily supply the country’s electricity.  

The government is working to phase out both nuclear energy and coal-fired power.  

“We are trying to diversify the sources of power supply. We are looking at Canada and hoping that your natural gas, LNG, can help us,” Tseng said. 

Canada is inches away from its first large-scale LNG exports, expected mainly to travel to Asia.  

The Coastal GasLink pipeline connecting LNG Canada is now officially in commercial service, and the terminal’s owners are ramping up natural gas production to record rates, according to RBN Energy. 

RBN analyst Martin King expects the first shipments to leave LNG Canada by early next year, setting up for commercial operations in mid-2025.