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A large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is to go ahead at Canada’s Athabasca oil sands with a C$865m ($655m) investment.

The government of Alberta is providing C$745m, with the Canadian national government providing the remaining C$120m for the Quest CCS project. Quest is 60% owned by Shell Canada, with the remaining 40% split equally between Chevron Canada and Marathon Oil Sands.

Alberta selected the Quest CCS project for negotiations on funding in June 2009, and the letter of intent for the funding was signed on 8 October 2009 by Alberta’s energy minister Mel Knight, federal minister of natural resources Lisa Raitt, and Shell vp Graham Bojé. Although the letter of intent is not legally binding, it provides the framework for negotiations to finalise the funding arrangements.

Quest Venture manager. Jean Louis Alixant says: “There is a growing community of CCS specialists within Shell, the industry, academia and government that is working hard to ensure that society learns fast and makes the most of the CCS opportunity in a responsible manner. This announcement is a very positive sign that will stimulate our common efforts.”

The Quest CCS project will capture around 1.2m t/y of carbon dioxide (a reduction of around 40%) from Shell Canada’s Scotford oil sands upgrader near Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. It will use amine technology to capture the CO₂, which will be compressed to a liquid form and transported by pipeline to an area northeast of Scotford and stored in an impermeable geological formation (basal Cambrian sands) 2 km underground.