Once operational, Quest will be the world’s first CCS project to tackle CO₂ emissions from oil sands, as well as Shell’s first CCS project on a commercial scale. Quest will result in the reduction of direct emissions from the bitumen upgrader at Scotford, by one million tonnes of CO₂ each year – equivalent to taking 175,000 cars off the road.

Alberta Energy Minister Diana McQueen commended Quest’s progress, noting that the project will enable them to ‘grow Alberta’s economy to be a global energy supplier, while also doing it responsibly and taking care of emissions’.

The Alberta government has to date invested EUR 100 million in CO₂ capture and storage projects. Over the next 15 years, another EUR 1 billion will be invested into Quest and a separate project, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line. The carbon trunk line is a 240-kilometre pipeline that will carry 1.8 million tonnes of CO₂ each year from a bitumen refinery and a fertilizer plant in the Industrial Heartland area to Clive. There the CO2 will be commercially used at depleting oilfield, stimulating new production through enhanced oil recovery methods.

Quest will recover CO₂ from a hydrogen production facility, which will subsequently be compressed, and transported in an underground pipeline to an injection site in Thorhild County, 60 kilometers north of the upgrader. The CO₂ will be injected into three storage wells, each more than two kilometers underground, and trapped in porous sandstone under multiple layers of impermeable geological formations.