“That is very much a false solution because CCS, as it’s currently being used in the oil and gas sector in Canada, 70 per cent of the time it’s used to enhance oil recovery,” she told The Telegram last week. “It’s about putting carbon into wells to re-pressurize the wells and bring them back to their earlier productivity. So this is really an oil production solution, not really a climate solution.
CCS in the oil and gas sector is expensive — as much as $200 per tonne for currently operating projects — as well as energy intensive, slow to implement and unproven at scale. U.S. climatologist and author Michael Mann says carbon capture strategies often just serve as a shell game for oil companies to distract from their most damaging activities.