September 13 & 14, 2023 • Suncor Community Leisure Centre Fort McMurray, Alberta
Oil Sands Conference & Trade Show
NEW FOR 2023
OIL SANDS INNOVATION LAUNCHPAD – SCHEDULE
September 13
1:00 pm – 1:30 pm
De-risking CO2 Storage Projects: Strategies for Addressing Well, Reservoir, Caprock, and Integrity Risks
Presenters: Mohsen Tavakolian, Senior Researcher – Insitu Recovery, Innotech Alberta
As the urgency to combat climate change increases, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have gained significant attention for their potential to mitigate CO2 emissions. One of the key challenges in implementing CCS projects lies in de-risking the entire process to ensure safe and effective storage of CO2. This presentation explores the risks associated with well, reservoir, caprock, and integrity during CO2 storage projects and proposes innovative strategies to minimize these risks.
CO2 storage projects involve the injection of CO2 into deep geological formations, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers. While this approach shows promising, it is crucial to address the potential risks that may arise during each stage of the project life cycle.
Risks and Challenges:
1. Well: Poor well integrity can lead to CO2 leakage into shallower formations, compromising the project’s effectiveness and posing environmental and safety hazards.
2. Reservoir: Uncertain subsurface conditions may cause unexpected migration of CO2, resulting in sub-optimal storage or even CO2 breakthrough at the surface, or the activation of faults that may trigger seismic events.
3. Caprock: Faulty caprock integrity may lead to caprock breach and CO2 escape, endangering nearby communities and ecosystems.
4. Integrity: Overall project integrity, including storage site monitoring and verification (MMV), is vital to ensure long-term success and public confidence.
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Closing the Skills Gap with Knowledge Automation
Presenters: Francis Montemurro, Director of Operations, Voovio
Our industry is dealing with a major challenge, which is growing every day: The Skills Gap. Plants are challenged in recruiting, onboarding and maintaining operators and maintenance personnel. The traditional way of onboarding new hires and relying on a few SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) on critical operations is not working. Knowledge Automation, deployed by the world’s biggest companies, is proven to solve this challenge. You will learn how Knowledge automation:
- Captures & transfers critical operator knowledge
- Makes onboarding efficient and effective
- Prevents operations personnel being overwhelmed
- Reduces unplanned events
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Overhead Corrosion Monitoring & Control
Presenters: Carol Dwaik, Technical Specialist, Lee Davis,Technical Specialist, Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions
Overhead corrosion control within Upgraders’ operations has become increasingly important as units ramp up production rates to accommodate market demand. The industry has adopted a proactive approach to ensure prolonged equipment integrity, aimed at mitigating downtime, costly repairs and safety risks. When facilities rely on manual testing and stand-alone readings to adjust overhead operation, rapidly changing conditions can lead to severe corrosion episodes.
An integrated overhead monitoring and treatment program, which includes a combination of online crude overhead monitoring systems, real-time cloud-based data management and analytics, and customized chemical treatment, has proven to successfully prevent overhead corrosion at Upgrader facilities. Collaborating with a subject facility’s operation team, this integrated solution has enabled them to detect operating conditions that put the system at risk of corrosion, communicate the required adjustment, and monitor the impacts in real-time. The customized treatment recommended is composed of patented neutralizing amines designed to reduce the risk of salt deposition caused by traditional amines, by adequately controlling salting points within overhead systems. It is also comprised of a unique volatile filming chemistry that exhibits a wide range of pH stability, providing a tenacious protective barrier.
The implementation of this type of comprehensive overhead treatment solution can enable upgraders operating in a challenging market environment to extend asset useful life, reduce total cost of ownership and improve productivity.
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm
Sour Water Tower Foam Control
Presenters: Michael Gallagher, Technical Specialist, Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions
At bitumen upgrader sites, efficiency of the sour water concentrator tower is essential to maintain productivity of the coker and the overall upgrading process. The role of the concentrator tower is to strip volatile contaminants, such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), from the collected streams of sour water generated on site, and enable its reuse in the process. Inability to produce a treated stream that meets process standards can significantly impede production. The presence of foam in the tower, which can be caused by aromatic hydrocarbons such as Naphtha, presents a significant issue as it acts as a carrier for contaminants into the treated stream. In the absence of a contingency treatment program, the main action to respond to contaminated sour water is to reduce coker throughput, in order to manage sour water production of the site of which can cost millions in daily production loss. After presenting the sour water tower operational concepts and discussing the various sources of contamination, this paper will review a case study where a Canadian oil sands’ sour water concentrator tower was treated with a foam control agent and prevented recurrence of a month-long, $48MM rate curtailment on coker production.