Quest to clean up Canada's Tar Sands

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/08/110818-quest-ca rbon-capture-canada-oil-sands/

Brian Handwerk

For National Geographic News

Published August 18, 2011

The first large-scale effort to capture carbon dioxide emissions in the Canadian oil sands surmounted a crucial hurdle this summer with the signing of government agreements to underwrite nearly two-thirds of the $1.35 billion project's cost.


The Quest Carbon Capture and Storage project still must pass regulatory hurdles before a consortium led by Shell* makes a final decision to go forward with its share of the investment. Although Quest would rank among the half-dozen largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in the world, sequestering 1.2 million metric tons of CO2 per year in the deepest saline aquifer of Alberta, environmentalists point out the amount is just a small fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions from the province's oil sands operations