CO2 Sequestration Project Fails, Disasterously

Land fizzing like soda pop, animals dying

A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.

The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground.

Cameron and Jane Kerr own nine quarter-sections of land above the Weyburn oilfield in eastern Saskatchewan. They released a consultant's report Tuesday that links high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by energy giant Cenovus (TSX:CVE) in an attempt to enhance oil recovery and fight climate change.

"We knew, obviously, there was something wrong," said Jane Kerr.

 It's inevitable that new technologies (indeed, all technologies) have their failures, but to have a failure on this scale on one of the first few working  projects suggests that this will be a troublesome process, and suggests inadequate groundwork for this project in particular.

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