CALGARY — Shell Canada says the Quest carbon capture and storage project north of Edmonton has reached the milestone of five million tonnes of stored carbon dioxide, equivalent to the annual emissions of about 1.25 million cars.

It says the accomplishment was achieved ahead of schedule and has been attained at a lower cost than expected.

Quest opened in 2015 and cost about $1.35 billion, backed with $745 million from the Alberta government and $120 million from Ottawa.

Majority ownership of the project was sold to Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. in 2017, along with most of Shell’s Alberta oilsands assets, but Shell retained a 10 per cent interest and is still the operator.

It says the cost to operate Quest is about 35 per cent lower than what was forecast in 2015 and, if Quest were to be built today, it would cost about 30 per cent less.

Quest captures about one third of the CO2 emissions from the Shell-operated Scotford oilsands upgrader and transports it via a 65-kilometre pipeline to be stored more than two kilometres underground in a sandstone rock reservoir.

“Widespread adoption of carbon capture and storage is one of the key solutions the world needs right now to help solve the climate challenge,” said Shell Canada president Michael Crothers.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2020.

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The Canadian Press

EDMONTON — Four years after its flames guttered out, the record-breaking Fort McMurray wildfire continues to astound — this time with its lasting impact on an extensive river system.

“It’s actually stunning that we were able to observe an effect at that large scale,” said Uldis Silins, a University of Alberta professor and co-author of a recently published study on how the 2016 blaze affected the Athabasca River.

In May 2016, the fire swept through nearly 6,000 square kilometres of boreal forest in northern Alberta. Fort McMurray lost 2,400 buildings, and 88,000 people were forced from their homes.

With damage estimates of $10 billion, it was the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history.

Almost immediately after the city was safely cleared, Silins and his colleagues were flown in as part of an emergency reaction team to assess the threat to Fort McMurray’s water supply.

Previous research has looked at how wildfires affect headwater streams in the mountains. But nobody had looked at their impacts on a large, slow, boreal river winding through wetlands. 

“The extent to which the fire would impact water was highly uncertain,” said Silins.

For seven months, the team sampled and tested the Athabasca and several tributaries upstream of Fort McMurray.

The Athabasca is huge — nearly a kilometre across in many places — and it drains nearly one-quarter of Alberta. It’s tea-coloured and turbid, full of organic material.

The scientists were amazed when, every time it rained, they were able to detect significant increases in ash, potassium, nitrogen, calcium and heavy metals such as lead even within the river’s normal load.

“It’s a very, very large watershed,” Silins said. “We really were not expecting to see any impact at that scale.”

Those impacts are magnified because tributary water doesn’t mix evenly with the Athabasca’s main flow.

“You’ve got a river the colour of chocolate milk and these small tributaries during certain events — a good rain, for example — look like hot fudge,” said co-author Monica Emelko of the University of Waterloo.

“That hot-fudge sauce doesn’t necessarily mix in. That plume that extended for a very long distance, hugging the riverbank, is likely what was making its way into the water treatment plant in Fort McMurray.”

The fire residue also makes it harder to manage bacteria in the city’s reservoir.

Emelko said the city’s water has remained safe — it’s just harder and more expensive to make it so. City officials have said treatment costs increased 50 per cent after the fire.

“There is a very clear signature of the wildfire on drinking water supply and treatment in Fort McMurray,” Emelko said. “The community is paying a continued cost because of the fire.”

In most places, fire impacts on watersheds quickly dissipate. Studies on several Alberta fires in the foothills and the Rocky Mountains, however, show that hasn’t been the case.

Scientists believe the lingering presence of fire-related material could be related to the province’s geology being rich in fine-grained sediments.

“There, we have certainly seen a long persistence of those fire effects — far longer than has been reported in most other regions worldwide,” Silins said.

Climate and forest scientists have long suggested that huge fires such as the one dubbed “the Beast” in Fort McMurray are going to become more common as warmer temperatures dry forests out and extend the burning season.

“As climates have shifted, and we’re very clearly seeing a shift in wildfire behaviour, we’re going to see these kinds of impacts on water more and more often,” said Silins.

“Fires are impacting a far broader range of ecosystem values and human values than we thought. This is something we’re going to have deal with on a far more regular basis.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 10, 2020

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Bob Weber, The Canadian Press