CALGARY, Alberta, Feb 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department ofEnergy said on Wednesday it would spend up to $500,000 to testmonitoring technologies at a Royal Dutch Shell Plc oilsands carbon-capture and storage facility under construction innorthern Alberta.
The department said it will field test advanced monitoring,verification and accounting technologies for the storage ofcarbon dioxide underground at the Quest project, which isattached to an oil sands upgrader that converts bitumen from theoil sands into refinery-ready synthetic crude.
The department said such technologies are crucial to trackthe movement of carbon dioxide in underground storage reservoirsand to ensure the gas is permanently stored.
The C$1.35 billion Quest project will be Canada's secondcarbon and storage project when completed later this year, andstore as much as one million tonnes of the gas annually. Thefirst, the Boundary Dam facility attached to a coal-fired powerplant in Saskatchewan, was commissioned in October.
"In order for this technology to be advanced, collaborationwill be needed," Cameron Yost, a spokesman for Shell, said in astatement.
"This concept has been central to the Quest project and ourwork with the Department of Energy is an extension of Shell'sefforts to progress CCS through collaboration and knowledgesharing."
The Canadian government, which has put C$120 million ($95.6million) into the Quest project, welcomed the Department ofEnergy's move. Canada and the U.S. continue to spar over theKeystone XL pipeline project, which President Obama said he willnot approve if it significantly raised greenhouse-gas emissions.
"Today's announcement is welcome news for North Americanenergy cooperation and integration," Greg Rickford, Canada'sminister of natural resources, said in a statement. ($1 = 1.2551 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Scott Haggett. Editing by Andre Grenon)
