Have you ever played the word association game? Where someone tosses out a random word and you’re asked to respond with the first thing that comes to mind? For example, when someone says ‘Kananaskis’, I think ‘park.’ And I’m probably not the only one.
A common misconception is that all of Kananaskis Country is ‘park land’, where in actual fact, it is defined as a ‘multiple use area’. So what does that mean? Well, according to the Alberta government’s web site:
When you visit, you may see a variety of commercial activities such as cattle grazing, timber harvesting, and gas wells. These important economic activities take place on Alberta forestlands outside of protected areas and parks. Recreational activities take place in both the parks and protected areas and in the multiple use forestlands of Kananaskis Country.
The proposed Sullivan gas field project is located in the southern Alberta foothills. The area is west of Longview, north of Highway 541 and just inside the boundaries of Kananaskis Country. This is in an area that’s been zoned for oil and gas development.
Development in the Sullivan area is not new. It’s a beautiful area, but one that is far from untouched. Historically, the area has experienced oil and gas exploration dating back to the 1940s with more recent exploration and drilling by Shell Canada (‘70s) and by UPRI (2000). In fact, there are five suspended wells, four well pads and associated access roads in the Sullivan area and much of this infrastructure has been incorporated into the planning of Petro-Canada’s proposed development to reduce environmental impacts.
You may be wondering why – with all of this work – there hasn’t been any production. Well, largely because the necessary pieces needed to produce and transport the gas don’t currently exist. That’s where the Sullivan proposal comes in.
To develop the Sullivan field, Petro-Canada proposes to drill 11 new gas wells from three existing and two proposed well pads, and to construct a gathering system, field facilities and a trunk line to take the gas to an existing gas processing facility, Devon Canada’s Coleman plant.
Which brings us to "why here?" Alberta's a big province so why can't Petro-Canada just go about its business somewhere else?
A few reasons:
Experience: Petro-Canada has been involved in natural gas exploration and development in the Alberta foothills for over 30 years. The company currently operates the Wildcat Hills and Hanlan Robb gas plants as well as the Savanna Creek field, which is in close proximity to the Sullivan area. The Sullivan project would be a natural and logical extension of Petro-Canada's Alberta foothills development.
Existing development in the area: As noted above, oil and gas exploration activities have taken place in the Sullivan field for many years. There's an opportunity here to leverage infrastructure that's already there -- minimizing our impact on the environment.
Resource size: conservatively, Petro-Canada expects the life of the field to be 25 years with the potential for up to 40 years of production. At peak rates, it will produce enough energy for approximately 70,000 homes per year!
A conventional opportunity: according to a recent report, Alberta's Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) expects conventional gas production to decline by an average of 3.3 per cent per year from 2008-2017 (PDF - 12.4 mb). When it comes to conventional developments, the industry has more experience developing them as opposed to unconventional plays like coal-bed methane or shale gas. The Sullivan development is a conventional project in an area that Petro-Canada has years of experience in developing.
I’ve received a lot of requests for specifics about the project so to help provide some context I’ve pulled together a list of additional fast facts on the Sullivan project.
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