Members of the public came out Monday evening to hear the results of a scientific study released earlier in the day, showing that CO2 injected into the ground by Cenovus Energy is not contaminating a farm at Goodwater near the Cenovus plant.
Members of the public came out Monday evening to hear the results of a scientific study released earlier in the day, showing that CO2 injected into the ground by Cenovus Energy is not contaminating a farm at Goodwater near the Cenovus plant.
There is no scientific evidence that there is any leakage of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the Goodwater-area farm of Cameron and Jane Kerr, concluded an international team of scientists in a 180-page report released on Monday.
"The CO2 injected by Cenovus Energy as part of its enhanced oil recovery project is not the source of CO2 found on Kerr farm. The levels of natural CO2 we found were normal," said Dr. Carmen Dybwad, CEO of the International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide, or IPAC-CO2.
At a town hall meeting held in Weyburn on Monday night by IPAC on the results of their report, the process and results of the study were explained by Dr. Dybwad and by Dr. Jerry Sherk, the Chief Operating Officer of IPAC who headed up the research team.
The team was assembled by IPAC-CO2, and were independent of the Kerrs and of Cenovus Energy, and included experts from The University of Texas at Austin who investigated soil and water samples from the Kerr farm, Dr. Stuart Gilfillan from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Dr. Janis Dale from the Department of Geology at the University of Regina.
"We're proud of the fact it was independent. We also had to make sure it's factually-based and not speculative," said Dr. Dybwad.
"We found it's all natural, and it's all biologic in origin. There are a lot of gases that occur naturally, and all the levels we found at the Kerr farm were normal and biologic in nature. None of the CO2 is leaking from Cenovus activities," she added.
The study basically confirmed findings released two weeks before by Cenovus, from a scientific report they had commissioned which showed no evidence that any CO2 injected into the ground had migrated or leaked onto the Kerr farm, causing contamination of their property and forcing them to move off the farm in 2004.
In 2010, the couple hired Saskatoon-based Petro-Find GeoChem Ltd., a consulting firm, which did soil gas studies, and based on their findings, the Kerrs demanded there be an investigation to find the cause of what they felt was excess CO2 on their land and in their water.
IPAC, as an agency dedicated to promoting the safe storage of CO2 underground, decided this was important enough an issue to step forward and independently do a fully-scientific research project into the allegations. As Dybwad told the Weyburn audience, the research project was completely self-financed, even though they are a non-profit agency.
An audience member asked why it took so many years for a study like this to be done, and Dybwad pointed out that IPAC is relatively new (established in 2009), and the Kerrs' news conference in January of this year was the first they were aware of the issue. Looking into it, Sherk said, they found there have been many studies done on the Weyburn-Midale CO2 project, as far back as 1998, and all of these have been now posted on the IPAC website, with the exception of the Cenovus study just released.
The results of IPAC's research was peer-reviewed, as in all of the methods of research and of testing were reviewed by an independent panel of scientists, to make sure the research was done properly, following proper scientific protocols.
The result, said Dybwad, is that the model of their study can now be taken to other CO2 projects in Canada or elsewhere around the world to do tests, to ensure there is no leakage of CO2 in those locations.
"If someone somewhere thinks there's been a release (of CO2), you have to have some kind of approach to figure out if there was a leak, and then you have to share that knowledge so other projects around the world can benefit from it," said Dybwad.
She noted she was asked why the study wasn't broader, to include (for example) sulphur dioxide, and she pointed out that would require a completely separate study, and was not within the parameters of the issues that needed researching on the Kerr farm.
Sherk noted the soil gas analysis was done by Dr. Katharine Romanuk of the University of Texas at Austin, as she has done this sort of study all over the world. He said he told her, "We needed to reduce the level of uncertainty. Soil gas analysis is a fairly sophisticated way to analyze gases."
There are four basic gases that occur naturally in the soil: oxygen, nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide; in this case, there wasn't enough methane to be part of the analysis.
"In a naturally-functioning system, as CO2 levels go up, oxygen goes down and nitrogen stays constant. The pattern we saw in all samples is that nitrogen was stable. The soil gas analysis was conclusive, the CO2 is biologic in origin."
The work of Dr. Gilfillan was on the noble gases, for which there are only three sources on Earth: atmospheric, the earth's crust, and the earth's mantle. The gases are inert and can be used as tracers as to their origin, and again, said Sherk, the findings were absolutely conclusive: the CO2 did not come from a deep source in the ground but was naturally-occurring and atmospheric in origin.
Therefore, he said, the CO2 did not migrate underground from the Cenovus field, but was in the ground and water naturally.
One of the complaints from the Kerrs about their well water is that it had a sheen or film on top; this was tested, and is not a petroleum product, but are floating colonies of both iron-reducing and iron-oxidizing bacteria. In addition, the water was found to meet Saskatchewan's Drinking Water Quality Standards for potability.
Sherk said there were seven duplicate sets of ground water and four duplicate sets of surface water taken for testing.
He said in legal terms, "Our proof is beyond a reasonable doubt."
Dybwad said in order for technologies like the storage of CO2 to work, "the public has to have confidence in it. One of the ways you instill confidence is to have standards."
The results of the study were presented to the Kerrs and Eco-Justice prior to the Regina media conference, and the results will now be shared by Dybwad in Washington, D.C. with the U.S. Energy Association, and also with international media outlets which have expressed interest in this issue.
"This is international in scope," pointed out Dybwad.
