Mr. John Osborne (Business Development and Strategic Alliances, HTC Purenergy Inc.) at the Natural Resources Committee

Thank you.

My name is John Osborne. I'm filling in for Jessie Inman, who is normally based in Calgary but he is caught up in volcanic ash at the moment.

I'm going to give a very quick overview of HTC and our business, and then lead into tar sands and a proposal that we believe is the way to move forward on CO₂ capture at those sorts of operations.

HTC is a little different from our competitors in the CCS business. First of all, we are Canadian and we're based in Regina, Saskatchewan. We're in Regina because of our very important partner--our legal and commercial and technical partner, the University of Regina. We collaborate completely on all CCS matters.

We're also totally devoted to CCS. I would add another letter to the CCS, which is for “utilization”. We do not actually believe that CO₂ is a waste product. Obviously there are going to be move-and-supply situations, but we believe in the long term that CO₂ can be converted into useful products.

We're not like a big engineering or oil or chemical company with a small division looking at carbon capture. We look at the whole integrated business--capturing the CO₂, transporting it, and then utilizing it either in storage or converting it to something useful--because we are in the business. I work internationally to develop these sorts of projects around the world as the business starts to develop.

I'd like to say one other thing. I notice from the previous speakers that I think only one has actually mentioned China. From our experience, China is way ahead. They're already marketing their clean coal technologies in the United States, for the simple reason that they're going to make money out of it. Then they're going to return to China, as they are right now, to start developing some very interesting carbon capture and storage and utilization projects.

I mentioned the University of Regina.

We are also different because we have a fundamental science capability. We have a full R and D centre in Regina. We have a one-tonne-a-day capture plant, where we do all of our modelling and testing and whatever.

When we have something useful, we go down to the Boundary Dam ignite coal-fired plant that SaskPower mentioned earlier on. It operates for four months, two days. We operate it by taking a slipstream of one of the units of the coal-fired plants, scrubbing it to take out the SO₂, and then we capture the CO₂. There we test not only the solvents we design, but also new processes. This is about a five-tonne-a-day unit. If it works there, we reckon it will work anywhere.

We are also working on an 11-year-old CO₂ capture plant, a commercial plant, on a coal-fired power plant in the United States. It's 200 tonnes a day. It's capturing the CO₂ from a coal-fired plant, and currently the CO₂ is being sold to Coca-Cola.

We're actually planning to scale up. This CO₂ will be linked to the new shale gas play in the Pennsylvania area, where we expect to be able to use the CO₂ to fracture the horizontal wells. That eliminates the use of water, which is a major environmental issue.

Secondly, and more importantly to us, because it's going to make money, is that we're going to be using the CO₂ and testing it for enhanced gas recovery to increase the amount of gas produced and also extend the life of the horizontal wells. We think this is a major, major event.

We're also working on a plant that is 31 years old, in southern California--Death Valley. It's 800 tonnes a day. They capture CO₂ from a coal-fired plant, but they utilize the CO₂ to create soda ash. They bubble it through their brine and go through a heating process and produce this soda ash, which they sell. We have been working on this plant for well over a year. We've completely modelled it, and we'are ready to upgrade it to hopefully as much as 1,200 tonnes a day, which would make it the world's largest commercial operating CO₂ capture plant.

Our process is very straightforward. If you look at any large gas plant you're going to see units there--an absorber and a stripper--that look exactly the same as in our plant. That's about where the similarities end. Inside you must have solvents that do not break down in the presence of contaminants. You also need a special design in order to reduce the operating costs. The operating costs are based on the amount of steam you need to regenerate the solvent.

I'll give you some projects we've worked on worldwide. A couple of years ago we slugged it out in Norway for the European TCM Mongstad project. This is a test site where there will be a new amine plant. We beat out all the competition, except for the local Norwegian company, which was eventually awarded the contract, which was no surprise to us.

On another example of a project we didn't get, last year we put together a $600 million project in Michigan with Detroit Edison. We made our submission to the DOE and lost out to American Electric Power and a couple of other companies. This was going to be--it's still on the books--a 2,000-tonne-a-day capture plant on a coal-fired plant, with a 70-mile pipeline and injection for EOR. The oil field is sitting on top of a massive saline aquifer, which could also be used to store the CO₂. So that didn't come through.

We did come through with the world's currently largest CO₂ capture plant. It is being designed and engineered, and will hopefully be built later this year. It is based on electric. We eyeballed this one in North Dakota many years ago. We got it a couple of years ago and then lost it for a bit. We got it back just before Christmas last year. This is a 3,000-tonne-a-day unit. We are designing and engineering it right now with our partners, Doosan Heavy Industries. As I said, this will be the world's largest CO₂ capture plant. The CO₂ will be used for EOR.

I mentioned the tar sands.We have developed a modular unit that is essentially transportable. It's pre-designed and pre-engineered. There are a couple of interesting things about this unit that will capture CO₂ from pretty well any flue gas. First of all, it's built in a shop, so you're able to bring all the pieces together in a shop in modules and test them prior to shipment to the site. Then you can erect them very quickly on site at a much-reduced capital cost. Of course, if somebody comes along and says they'd like to buy two or three of them, that will not only drop our costs but will drop the price of the units.

We feel this is a very good unit that could be used on the SAGD oilers. We would very much like to see such a unit installed in a test situation and then ramped up by adding additional units later on, as and when needed. We feel this is definitely a very good solution to some of the issues on tar sands.

Thank you very much.