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Alberta expects to reach an agreement with oil companies on the deployment of carbon capture technology in the oil sands in the summer, the province’s premier said on Friday.“I would hope it would be a matter of a month or two that we’d be able to get to an agreement,” Danielle Smith said at a press conference. “When we start talking with the oil sands group, they’ll see that there’s a number of things that the federal government has done to meet us in the middle and to make sure that we have found the right balance between reducing emissions in a way that allows for technology to develop, but also keeping the market competitive.”A deal with the Oil Sands Alliance to move forward with the Pathways carbon capture project would set the stage for a new oil pipeline to the British Columbia coast. The group represents companies operating in northern Alberta, including Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, Suncor Energy Inc, Cenovus Energy Inc, Imperial Oil Ltd and ConocoPhillips.Smith and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signed a memorandum of understanding last November in which Carney pledged to back a new million barrel a day oil pipeline to the west coast in exchange for deals on a higher industrial carbon tax, the shoring up of Alberta’s carbon trading system, agreement on methane emissions and the deployment of the Pathways carbon capture project in the oil sands.Last week, the two sides signed a final agreement on the industrial carbon price, leaving an agreement with the Oil Sands Alliance on Pathways being the last major issue to be resolved.Smith is seeking a new oil pipeline to Asia as a means to significantly grow Alberta’s nearly 5mn barrels a day of oil production. Last year’s MoU, called a “grand bargain” at the time, marked a thawing between the oil-producing province and Ottawa.Relations had deteriorated under previous Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government imposed a range of environmental regulations that Smith and the province’s oil industry say hindered development. Carney has staked his economic agenda on speeding up major infrastructure projects and lessening Canada’s reliance on exports to the US. He is also seeking to diffuse anti-federalist sentiment in Alberta, where a referendum on whether to stay in Canada or begin the process to separate is scheduled for the fall.Details of the new pipeline, including the planned route to the BC coast, are scheduled to be announced by July 1 and the province wants to receive conditional approval for the project by October 1, Smith said.Canadian heavy crude, produced in the oil sands, sells at a discount to the US benchmark West Texas Intermediate of about $13 a barrel since the expanded Trans Mountain oil pipeline started operation in 2024. Before the line started, the discount sometimes widened to $30 or more a barrel.“We suspect it could reduce another $2 to $3 per barrel even further by having more markets, which benefits every single barrel that we sell,” she said on Friday. 

QatarEnergy aims to scale its carbon capture and storage capacity to 7–9 million tonnes per year (mtpy) by 2030 and over 11 mtpy by 2035.Carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) is central to QatarEnergy’s lower-carbon strategy.So far, QatarEnergy has successfully deployed 2.2 mtpy of CCS capacity in Qatar, capturing CO2 from feed gas used in LNG trains and sales gas assets, contributing to lower-carbon LNG exports.“Since the inception, we have successfully captured and stored around 7.5mn metric tonnes of CO2,” QatarEnergy noted in its latest Sustainability Report.QatarEnergy’s North Field East (NFE), North Field South (NFS), and North Field West (NFW) expansion projects will be integrated with CCS infrastructure, targeting total capacity of over 5.5 mtpy once fully operational.Other CCUS plans include expanding CCS capacity at existing LNG trains, capturing CO2 in the production of lower-carbon ammonia, studying post-combustion carbon capture at gas-fired turbines, further design modifications of the existing CCS infrastructure to increase the annual injection capacity closer to its design limits and developing infrastructure to pilot utilisation of captured CO2 from RLIC for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project in Dukhan.Key CCUS developments in 2024 included QatarEnergy LNG North and South CO2 Capture Project and CO2 Export Pilot Project.In respect of QatarEnergy LNG North and South CO2 Capture Project, it aims to capture around 4MTPY of CO2 from the existing LNG facilities by compressing and injecting it via six wells within RLIC by 2030.CO2 Export Pilot Project: This project will transfer captured CO2 from QatarEnergy LNG facilities in RLIC to Dukhan for EOR.The captured CO2 will be dehydrated, compressed, and transported via a new 154 kilometers pipeline to Dukhan.The pilot project is part of QatarEnergy’s long-term strategy for the redevelopment of Dukhan fields that will contribute to the recovery of additional crude.The pilot project is expected to last for five years, and after the completion of a successful pilot phase a full field development is planned for the other parts of Dukhan.The project will directly reduce CO2 emissions because some of the injected CO2 will remain in the reservoir after injection. The project is expected to start before the end of 2027.“Efforts continued to support the development of a CCUS framework and standards for Qatar, ensuring a robust and scalable approach to reducing emissions,” QatarEnergy noted.

QatarEnergy targets a total carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) capacity of 7-9 MMTPY by 2030 and over 11 MMTPY by 2035 as part of its commitment to promoting a low-carbon business.“CCUS is an important lever in our corporate strategy to develop a position in low-carbon businesses,” QatarEnergy said in its ‘Sustainability Report’.“As our CCUS capacity grows in the coming years, we understand that a CCUS standard and framework is required for the State of Qatar and are contributing to their development,” QatarEnergy said and noted, “Our current 2.2 MMTPY CCUS capacity captures inherent CO2 in the feed gas to the LNG trains and sales gas assets.”The capture of this CO2 is important in producing lower carbon intensity LNG for export, the report noted.At the NFE and NFS LNG expansion projects (at North Field), QatarEnergy also intend to incorporate CCUS systems, which will be integrated with existing CCUS capacity.Since its inception, QatarEnergy has captured and successfully stored around 6.3mn metric tonnes of CO2.According to QatarEnergy, future CCUS plans include integrating CCUS with existing LNG trains, capturing CO2 in the production of lower-carbon ammonia, capturing CO2 from a new natural gas processing facility supplying feed gas to downstream industries, while capturing post-combustion carbon from gas fired turbines as, well as building CO2 transport pipeline infrastructure.“The feasibility and implementation of all projects under consideration is subject to QatarEnergy’s robust technical and economic evaluation processes considering all aspects of the CCUS value chain (capture, transport, utilisation and storage),” the report said.The report includes key highlights in progressing CCUS in 2023. The CO2 Export Project is progressing on schedule, achieving an overall progress of around 94%.The project will export captured CO2 from QatarEnergy LNG South facilities to Dukhan for enhanced oil recovery purposes.The FEED project to capture CO2 from seven QatarEnergy LNG North trains and three QatarEnergy LNG South trains was awarded in 2023 and year-end progress was over 50%.CO2 will be captured from the acid gas enrichment process of the LNG trains and compressed in a centralised facility to meet the required wellhead injection pressure. Six injection wells will be drilled within RLIC as part of the project.The potential CO2 capture from this project is over 4 MMTPY, significantly contributing to the reduction of GHG intensity of QatarEnergy LNG facilities.As part of further emissions mitigation from QatarEnergy operations, in 2022, QatarEnergy signed a memorandum of understanding with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to develop a CCS roadmap.In 2023, the OEM commenced a feasibility study of implementing post-combustion carbon capture technologies with the objective of capturing around 2.5 MMTPY of CO2 from power plants.