Will you be in the carbon capture ‘kill zone’?
Art by Ata Ojani/Canada’s National Observer
By John Woodside
30 August 2024
Being exposed to concentrated carbon dioxide is like being suffocated by a ghost. You can’t see it, can’t smell it, and the only way to tell you’re being poisoned is because you’re struggling to breathe. If you’re exposed long enough, you will die.
If plans to dramatically expand carbon capture technology to manage greenhouse gas emissions are pursued, it will mean a network of hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres of concentrated CO2 pipelines running under communities and Indigenous nations, demanding increased attention paid to these emerging risks, experts say.
Carbon capture is becoming a linchpin of Canada’s plan to reduce emissions from its oil and gas sector, but to pull this plan off would require massive investments in necessary infrastructure: pipelines, pressurization stations, equipping carbon capture to bitumen upgraders and more, all of which could fail. In a carbon management strategy, released in 2023, the federal government says to support the country’s emission reduction efforts, carbon capture capacity must grow 270 per cent from current levels by 2030, with “significant further scaling required” to reach net-zero by 2050.
By far the largest project would be the Pathways Alliance’s $16.5-billion flagship carbon capture project, which would include a carbon dioxide pipeline stretching 400 kilometres from the oilsands in northern Alberta to a storage hub about 300 kilometres east of Edmonton.
As countries like Canada plot a dramatic expansion of CO2 pipelines to help deal with rising emissions from the oil and gas sector, which now account for the largest source of emissions in the country, managing safety risks will become increasingly important, because when carbon dioxide pipelines fail, they can fail catastrophically.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, there have been at least 76 reported safety incidents related to CO2 pipelines since 2010 in the United States. Some incidents are minor and others are disastrous, but all point to the risks of transporting and storing carbon dioxide as a way to manage greenhouse gas emissions.
Canada’s National Observer has mapped the incidents, revealing pipelines operated by Kinder Morgan have the most frequent issues.
CO2 Pipeline Incidents, (SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOR INTERACTIVE AREA)
One of the worst of those incidents happened in February, 2020, when a CO2 pipeline ruptured near Satartia, Miss., forcing the evacuation of 200 people and hospitalizing 45. Crises like what happened in Mississippi, and other incidents like a CO2 leak at a Wyoming school that forced students to evacuate, point to mounting safety concerns.
Being exposed to concentrated carbon dioxide is like being suffocated by a ghost. You can’t see it, can’t smell it, and the only way to tell you’re being poisoned is because you’re struggling to breathe. If you’re exposed long enough, you will die.
CO2 is colourless, odorless and an asphyxiant. It displaces oxygen, meaning that when people are exposed to it they don’t see or smell it coming — they just struggle to breathe until they die or the cloud dissipates. In Satartia, it was the closest of calls, with some residents struggling to remain conscious as they desperately fled.
Jack Willingham, the emergency director for the town’s county, told NPR, “It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse.”
The United States has at least 50 CO2 pipelines running more than 8,000 kilometres, while Canada has five major CO2 pipelines stretching a combined 464 kilometers, according to the Canada Energy Regulator. Not yet included in Canada’s CO2 pipeline count are the proposed Pathways project and projects proposed by Wolf Midstream and Whitecap Resources, which are separately planning CO2 pipelines in Alberta and Saskatchewan, respectively.
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