By: Nick Ettinger, Renée Matthews & Rudiger Tscherning
PDF Version: Alberta’s Carbon Capture & Storage Land Grab And The Potential For Conflicts Of Subsurface Rights
Matter Commented On: Alberta’s Request for Full Project Proposals for Carbon Capture and Sequestration Hubs
On March 3, 2022, the Government of Alberta issued a province-wide Request for Full Project Proposals (RFPP) for carbon capture and sequestration hubs (CCS Hubs). This followed a more limited RFPP for CCS Hub(s) to service emissions from Alberta’s Industrial Heartland (IH), which closed on February 1, 2022. By the end of March 2022, Alberta Energy is expected to announce the successful proponents of the IH RFPP, who will receive permits to evaluate large amounts of publicly owned pore space for the eventual permanent sequestration of millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2). The RFPP for the rest of the province closes on May 2, 2022. Nigel Bankes has previously commented on the evolution of this process for pore space tenure dispositions (see here, here, and here). We’ve previously described the potential for conflicts arising from the subsurface convergence of CCS and critical minerals such as helium and lithium in Alberta (read our article here). This post examines the potential for conflicts of competing subsurface rights and interests arising from the current legislative scheme and the province’s rapid roll-out of CCS Hub dispositions.