The Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown corporation, has bough t84,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission offsets from natural gas developer Encana Corp. (TSX:ECA) – a reduction equivalent to taking 22,050 cars off the road for one year.
The project, located in the Jean Marie formation near Fort Nelson, involves using a technique known as “underbalanced drilling,” which uses natural gas as a drilling lubricant instead of nitrogen.
The natural gas is captured through on-site recovery and streamed into a pipeline, eliminating the need for routine flaring.
Under the carbon offset agreement, the trust will also buy up to 30,000 additional tonnes in 2011 and 2012.
Pacific Carbon Trust CEO Scott MacDonald said, “As B.C. puts a clear price on carbon, Encana has implemented an innovative technology that can help B.C. as it works toward becoming a global leader in environmentally responsible energy extraction.”
This is the first use of this technology and application in Canada and is believed to be the first commercial-scale program of its type in the world. The method can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Richard Dunn, vice-president of regulatory and government relations for Encana’s Canadian division, said, “Encana’s corporate culture mandates that we challenge ourselves to be environmentally sensitive in our day-to-day operations.
“When we looked at this specific reservoir, we saw a great opportunity to reduce our environmental footprint and recover larger volumes of gas from our producing assets. This project, which Encana also partially funded through its environmental innovation fund, has made some great strides in advancing the technical understanding of how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in some drilling operations.”
B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake commented on the project: “This kind of industry leadership to reduce emissions demonstrates the growing positive relationship between the economy and the environment.”
“B.C. has provided the incentive for companies to shift to lower-carbon technologies and is building the offset market to make emissions reductions more affordable.”
Jennifer Harrison