After the presentation to the Estevan Chamber of Commerce on April 17, president and CEO Dan MacLean touched on future developments with the Aquistore project.
Aquistore involves two of the deepest wells in Saskatchewan, an injection well, and an observation well, located approximately three kilometres due west of the Boundary Dam Carbon Capture plant.
Carbon dioxide captured by that plant that is not used by the Whitecap-operated Weyburn Unit is pumped down the Aquistore injection well.
“We’ve recognized a couple things about Aquistore. One of them is that it’s limited to one injection well, and one observation well. The observation well is a small diameter well that doesn’t lend itself to being a new injection well, and it’s 150 metres away from the injection well,” he noted
“We see a potential need to drill a third well for a number of reasons. Number one is to get in front of the flood, to understand how that thing is moving forward. So as an observation well, to measure and monitor beyond the first observation well gave us.”
It would also be a backup injection well. With the new equivalency agreement, if the Weyburn Unit, for whatever reason, cannot take the CO2 produced, there is a need for a home for it. The singular injection well may not have enough capacity in that regard, thus the need for a second well as a backup.
The technical group is considering placement of the third well, but it won’t be too far away.
The two previous wells, combined, cost between $9 and $10 million. But drilling costs are much lower now.
MacLean would also like to see a much larger piece of core than was recovered at Aquistore. They only got the top portion pulling off the cap rock, but there were problems retrieving anymore.
To that end, he foresees working with DEEP Earth Energy Production, whose first well, drilled south of Torquay, also goes into the target Deadwood formation that Aquistore utilizes. (DEEP, in turn, had benefited from some of the knowledge acquired from Aquistore).
SaskPower, which owns and operates Aquistore, would be paying for this well should it go ahead. “We’re looking at costing this out in the next three months,” he said. If the third well does proceed, it is expected to be next year.
