Primacy, Licensing, and Pore Space: The Latest on Alaska's Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Program

So you're good here?

Open. And you're good to go.

Good.

How are you doing, Sean? Yeah, all right.

I think maybe, maybe you sit here and I'll sit here. Sure. I think our discussion is just to have the other sitting counter. Yeah, sounds good. Perfect.

Is when do we start?

Ladies and gentlemen, today your presentation is just beginning here in breakout room 4, 5, 6 or so, roughly. If you're looking for CCUS, you're in the right place. I think a decent amount of you work in the Department of Natural Resources, so great to have you here. Yeah, we have a great presentation today from two folks who have worked very extensively on this topic in a couple different roles. So I'll do a little bit of discussion of that, a little bit of their bios off the top of my head, and then I'll read their official bios so you who don't know them already know a little bit of their details.

But we've all had the occasion to really work together on this topic. Carbon capture, sequestration, and storage in Alaska in a couple different roles. I was working with our team at the Department of Natural Resources in the Governor's legislative package that unlocked both the Trees Bill, the use of our surface resources for carbon credit generation— I see Trevor in the audience, which he presented on yesterday— but also the Rocks Bill, which is the permanent sequestration and storage of carbon dioxide underground in our geologic reservoirs. So I was working on that initiative when now Chair McKay of the AOGCC was chair of the House Natural Resources Committee. So he endured many a presentation from our team on the topic.

And he has a background in the industry as a drilling engineer in Alaska, all around the world. And so, you know, that technical skills were brought to bear as we did that legislative work. And then now in his role at AOGCC, which has a key role implementing that legislation. And additionally, the state's authority to seek primacy from the EPA, which we'll hear about in his slides. Frank was very instrumental in a number of ways as we worked through that process and continues to be working at the university, also helping to facilitate expert stakeholder— expert industry groups and stakeholder groups to educate about CCUS.

And I think we'll hear a little bit about that work as we go forward. So let me just look quickly. I'll let you throw in things in your bios that I missed. I'm just looking here. Looks like Tom has been around the world.

You hold a petroleum engineering degree from Montana Technical University and a master's in environmental engineering from UAA and an MBA from APU. So got the hometown credentials. And then Frank certainly has his hometown credentials. He grew up in the elbow room, I think, in Fairbanks. So—.

Yeah. Working behind the bar, as all good Alaskans do. And petroleum engineering degree from UAF and then worked in a series of roles, I think, around the world for BP, including very importantly for CCUS and for Alaska at the Prudhoe Bay field up north. Very great to hear from both these folks, true experts in the subject matter. And we'll do— I think they both have a short presentation for you.

I think AOGCC Chair McKay is first, and then we'll turn it over to Mr. Paskman, and then we'll do a little bit of questions from myself, but also importantly from you all in the audience if we have time at the end. So, Chair, take it away.

Thanks.

Okay, well, thank you very much, John, and it's my privilege to be here with the distinguished colleagues today. And it's an absolute fact that we shepherded through the two House bills that covered the carbon offsets for the forestry component, and then of course the sequestration component for storing CO2 below ground. So we spent multiple, multiple hearings. It must have been approaching 40 hearings, I suppose, for both bills back in, I guess it was 2024, and We got them both through at least the House side. It's the friends you make along the way.

Yeah. And you know, there's a phrase that they use a lot in this type of operation, and they call it cradle to grave. And I was going to ask Commissioner Crowther, whose grave are we talking about here, John? Are you going to make me do this till I die? Anyway, yeah, when they say cradle to grave, ask them whose grave are they talking about.

Right? So we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of challenges, but we were very proud and, you know, satisfied to get those bills through the legislature. And then what happened to myself was they asked me, well, how'd you— now that you've retired from the legislature, how'd you like to chair the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission? I said, well, that sounds great.

You know, I'll do that. And they said, oh, we got to wait a year. And it wasn't just a recommendation or a suggestion or a statute. It's in the Constitution. So I had to wait a year to take my job at the Oil and Gas Commission.

But thankfully, the staff at the commission did almost all the work on this project while I was out in the cold. So when I showed up at the commission in January, most of the hard work had been done. So what I'm going to show you today is just a few slides on where we stand. Can I just tap on that and it'll go?

This guy. Oh, I see. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay.

Look at that technology. All right. So welcome, everyone. We're going to talk about the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission today and our role in the CCUS effort for Alaska. Obviously you know that stands for carbon capture utilization and storage.

And they often use the word sequestration interchangeably with storage. And of course that's below ground in pore space that the Oil and Gas Commission would have jurisdiction over. So let's see, we'll start here by— okay, so to give you a summary, as we just talked about, the House Bill 50 was the sequestration bill for CO2 signed into law in 2024 by Governor Dunleavy. And it set the legal framework to store carbon below ground in Alaska. At the same time, John's organization, the DNR, was setting their licensing and leasing regulations in February of '25.

The Oil and Gas Commission just recently finished our regulations for carbon storage in April. 110 Pages, and we spent a lot of time— staff did a lot of work to mesh Alaska's regulations with the EPA regulations on the same topic. And we did that intentionally so that when we go for primacy, which is now imminent, uh, we're hopeful that we would have a smooth and fairly quick approval. So we recently just had a public hearing as required by the process, May 14th, which literally is a week ago. There— no one testified in person.

Yeah, we did receive two sets of written comments. I'll talk about those more in a minute. And that— that— so we can check that box. We had our public hearing, and now we're in the process of submitting our complete application to the EPA for what they call primacy, which would enable the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission to permit Class VI CO2 disposal wells and also manage the storage of carbon dioxide in the underground reservoirs so that we would be able to manage that entire process here in Alaska. So that's what we're— that's our goal.

And we're hopeful— the most optimistic approval period I've heard is end of third quarter, more likely fourth quarter of this year, no later than first quarter of next year. And I'll explain some of that here in a moment about why we're optimistic about that. So carbon storage— The full life cycle— and like I joked about the cradle to grave process— regulatory system starts out with site selection and modeling. Find out where are we going to put the carbon dioxide. An operator must demonstrate that the geological situation can safely contain the CO2 and predict how it will behave underground over time.

So the good thing about Alaska is we have void space in several, let's say aged gas reservoirs. And probably the most prominent example I can think of on the Kenai is the Kenai Gas Field. Or on the slope, frankly the Prudhoe Bay Reservoir where we're every day injecting between 7 to 9 BCF gas back into the gas cap at Prudhoe crude oil. So we have lots of void space to use for CO2. And we know a lot about those reservoirs.

And we know they have a seal. They know that— we know that they'll contain gas. And so to say it very simply, we're very confident that we can proceed with a project here and we have the right rocks to do it. If we have an applicant that wants to store CO2 underground, we have a permitting and public process. The projects would require a detailed permit application, public notice, and opportunities for comment and hearings.

Well construction and integrity— something the AOGCC does every day for the oil and gas wells in Alaska. The wells must be engineered and tested to prevent leaks and ensure long-term containment. Now the one thing about Class VI wells that I always mention is CO2 is very corrosive when it's exposed to water. It creates carbonic acid which can corrode your normal soft steels very, very rapidly. So if you have a Class VI well that's going to handle CO2, you most likely would use chrome tubulars or perhaps even stainless steel tubulars to resist that corrosion.

So that's a little bit different than your normal oil and gas well. Monitoring and verification— we have continuous monitoring which would ensure the injected CO2 remains contained within the designated storage zone. And like I said a minute ago, a lot of our gas— well, all of our gas reservoirs that we produce from in Alaska are several thousand feet deep and we know that they're We know that they have a sealing mechanism because they've held gas for thousands of years and we've produced it from those reservoirs. Protection of drinking water is a vital component of this program. The core requirement is that injection must not endanger the underground sources of drinking water.

That is particularly important down on the Kenai, of course, because folks have drinking water wells and water wells for their homes and businesses on the Kenai. On the slope, we— I guess you could say we're kind of lucky because we have permafrost and there virtually are no drinking water sources in the oil fields on the North Slope. So that becomes less of a concern. The financial responsibility piece, just like for oil and gas wells, operators must prove they can fund corrective action, closure, and long-term stewardship, and we do that already with our oil and gas wells by bonding. The closure and post-injection care— even after injection stops, operators remain responsible for monitoring and site stability over time.

In our regulations, they're responsible for the storage of the CO2 for a term of 50 years. And that's quite a long time. And then after that, the state takes over ownership, which is basically indefinite. So those are the components of our regulations. I already mentioned the major milestones.

We did our Class VI Primacy application that we've been working on for well over a year now with the EPA is— we call it on the 5-yard line. We had our public hearing, and now we're preparing our final package that will be submitted to the EPA. And we're excited to get that done here, probably before the end of May.

Let's see, I already talked about the act that we— that got signed into law that enabled us to do this. Let's see, I'll skip down. I already mentioned we had the May 14th public hearing on the Class VI Primacy application. And then, like I said, we're hoping late May or early June to get that package submitted to the EPA.

So that's the conclusion of my short presentation. A couple other comments is we spent a lot of time with the EPA staff. You might— you probably heard Emma Pocan speak earlier in the conference. And we were lucky. She's the— head of Region 10.

And she had been the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation up here prior to that position. So we were lucky to have a person who was familiar with Alaska and familiar with our situation. So that helped a lot. We also did what's called crosswalks. Every so often we would review our progress on the regulations with EPA staff.

And to make sure that we were accommodating their requirements. And so we did those crosswalks several times over the year, and we're quite confident that our product that we're going to submit is going to be to their satisfaction. We did get two written comments back.

From the public hearing. One was from the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation about land ownership and some legal issues with how we manage subsurface carbon storage with differing land ownerships on the surface. And we've prepared a response to that, and that will go into our package. And then we also got a Fairly lengthy submittal. Bear with me here while I look up the names.

Yeah. We got a joint submittal, 11 pages from the group called the Alaska Center, the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Alaska Public Interest Research Group, the Center for Biological Diversity, Cook Inlet Keeper and the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition. And they gave us, I think it was 5 or 6 points that they wanted us to respond to and our staff is working on that as we speak. So once we complete that work, we'll submit our primacy application and hopefully get approved so that the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission can permit and manage Class VI CO2 storage wells in Alaska. So you might ask, well, who's going to do CO2 storage in Alaska?

And we have had some interest from Santos. I think they've been pretty public about wanting to be net zero in their operations. And that, of course, involves the Pika operation, which just went on first oil here a few days ago. Congratulations to Santos. And Obviously, if you're going to have an LNG export pipeline, which seems to be the hottest topic of the day, right?

You have to have, I think it's 5 parts per million CO2 in that stream. And I think the gas at Prudhoe has like 15% CO2. So there would have to be significant scrubbing of the CO2 at Prudhoe before it gets shipped for LNG purposes, LNG export purposes. So that CO2 would have to go somewhere and your two options are EOR, Enhanced Oil Recovery, or carbon storage. So it remains to be seen which way that goes, but that would probably be the biggest single applicant that we could predict might happen in the coming years assuming we get a pipeline.

So I think I'll stop there. John, Frank, thank you very much, and I'll sit down and wait for questions. Okay, thank you very much, Chair, and we'll just pass it directly to Professor Pasquale. I don't want to get—. And Chair McKay is just flipping through, there's some additional supplemental slides.

Oh, there we go. More information in his presentation. Yeah.

Take you away. Sounds good. Swap it out.

Yeah, thanks.

Tough act to follow two commissioners, but, uh, we'll give it a shot here. So, um, thanks, uh, thanks to the Governor and the Alaska State Legislature, we did pass a carbon storage law in 2024. The—. Actually, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who I'm here representing, has been interested in sequestration and started research on this in around 2005. Before the law passed, we were outlaws.

So it's nice to be on the right side of the law. Since the passage of that law, which was really— the DNR was instrumental in all the efforts and in the 36 to 40 hearings in front of the House and the Senate. I think that might have just been the House Resources Committee. I'm not sure. So it was a monumental effort and we did— we, the university, testified and answered questions in that process.

We also had a lot of benefit, and John made mention to this, from expertise from outside of the state of Alaska, and in fact outside of the United States of America, in that in the state of Alaska, we, by the Constitution, the resources of the state are managed on to the benefit of the people. That's one of the huge benefits we have as a state. When you go to the lower 48 and you try and do a carbon capture project, you might have 400 small landowners. In Alaska, you might have one, maybe two large institutions like the federal government through— on BLM land. It could be one of the native corporations, but large institutions who have a deep understanding of the value of that resource.

And it's one of the great advantages we have here. So when these laws and these processes like porous space licensing and permitting were being considered and the rules established, Alaska looked to places like Norway where they own the resource themselves on the behalf of the people. And so there must be 50 different sets of rules and regulations that were reviewed and considered before putting together what's best for Alaska. What you see on the screen here— and I'm not by any means going to go through that in any detail— is a map of the DNR processes for forest-based exploration licensing and conversion of that license to a lease. And then that's on the top side.

On the bottom side is the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission's process to evaluate and create an underground injection control Class VI storage facility permit. And so it's a continuous process with a lot of steps there. But those steps are established and can be followed. So because of this, Alaska CCUS is open for business. Now I mentioned the state of Alaska owns the resource and the land underneath that.

And the data from that is really a gift to the future. And what I have on the screen here is a QR code which you can scan with your phone. And that will open up the DNR's CCUS hub site, which hosts a wealth of information and data, thanks to the staff at the DNR, and to jumpstart CCoS projects because we have a ton of information, especially on the North Slope and in the Cook Inlet where you've got extensive exploration and drilling data. John, would you care to say— add anything to that? No, I think you summarized it quite well.

I would just say, you know, for folks that are interested in looking at this data, it's as simple as Frank shared. It's scanning that QR code. It's going to the hub site. It's all geolocated information. The state has long had everything from physical well core samples to well logs to other kinds of information available to the public.

But a lot of times it's either in a— certainly inscrutable to someone like me, but even technical folks can be hard to find those databases, access them. This service is really about making that information widely and quickly accessible. And Heather Beat was really our project lead on this. She's in the audience. If you want to talk to her about it, feel free to give her a question.

We did it in partnership with the Department of Energy and using some Department of Energy funds. So it's another example of state-federal cooperation to unlock our CCUS opportunities in Alaska. And if you're just looking for general geologic information for other purposes too, it's there on the website and a very accessible way. Accessible for them. So we're really happy to have that available and yeah, thanks for highlighting it.

Absolutely. So as an example of the availability of that data, when the university started doing research in northern Cook Inlet for a carbon capture site, I went to the AO GCC and I said, can we, you know, please get the well data for the wells in northern Cook Inlet? And Meredith Gull said, well, how about why don't you get all the data for all the wells in the entire state? I'm like, what? That works too.

And so she's like, yeah, just bring me a terabyte drive. So I ran down to Best Buy, gave her the drive, and the next morning I had the entire database of all the wells that are publicly available in my hands and put it— and sent that to our geoscience team. And they built the entire framework in that for the project with that data and then with other seismic data and pressure data. So tremendous resource, and it's maybe one of the world's largest QR codes available there. But—.

So—. You might ask the question, like, why? Why is the university interested in supporting this kind of research? And well, I will say Alaska is a great land and it has great storage opportunities. We got interested and very active in this in 2019 on the research side.

An organization from the University of North Dakota the Plains CO2 Research Institute made a presentation at a Senate Resources Committee meeting in Washington, D.C. And they were concerned about the threats and the opportunities that lay within carbon management. And Alaska is an energy state, it's a resource development state, it's a mining state. And having the the ability to capture carbon and either use it or sequester it is an important tool in our arsenal for developing those resources in a prudent, safe manner for the benefit of the people. So what we're seeing is that Alaska's geology— it's a huge state— It's well positioned with depleted oil and gas fields and also water-filled aquifers or sedimentary that are deep, are safe and secure for long-term storage. And these really do unlock investment opportunities and new jobs.

So for example, when you look at one of the resources in the state that sometimes gets a bad rap. That's the coal resource. OK. When I was growing up, it was home heat with coal. It was electricity generated from coal.

And the Fairbanks snow by springtime had ash on the surface. But when you go to Fairbanks now, you don't see that ash. The climate controls have improved, the ash emissions are gone, you can drive by an operating coal-fired power plant and it's a clean stack. There's nothing showing. And I drove past one in Wyoming the other day and it's generating 600 megawatts and you wouldn't know it's on except for a little bit of heat ripple from the flue stack.

But there is carbon dioxide around 15% in the emissions of coal. Well, the United States has 27%, about a quarter of all of the planet's coal resources. Alaska has more than half of all the coal in the United States. So when you talk about sustainable energy, I mean, we have thousands of years of that energy supply supply, and it's available across the state. I mean, I've tripped on coal on a hike, you know, it's like big boulders of it.

So, but when you talk about building a new coal-fired power plant, that can be off the table from a conversation, you know, a non-starter. But then you say, if I add on the back end of that coal plant a carbon capture system, which makes it even lower emissions than a natural gas-fired power plant, it gets people's attention. It gets their interest and they say, well, maybe I will think about that. And that's what we've been finding is it opens the door and unlocks the opportunity to really consider development and resource utilization in a life cycle and a full whole mindset kind of a way. So we see it also as an opportunity on the North Slope.

We talk a lot about Prudhoe Bay and Endicott and the legacy oil fields.

They generate a fair bit of CO2 emissions. Two-thirds of all the emissions from the state are from the North Slope industrial processes. And We export our oil, something like 80%, to the West Coast refineries, namely in Washington and in California. Both of those states have established laws now that are clean air standards that require the refined oil to gasoline product to be something like 40% lower carbon intensity by the year 2038. And I've looked at the data, you can see the data, you can Google the Washington State Department of Ecology manages their project and the Washington State GREET model has a database of all the oils that from Brazil to Russia to Canadian oil sands to Alaska.

And Alaska's oil is the second highest carbon intensity of any that is refined on the West Coast, second only to the Canadian oil sands, which is super thick and needs a lot of heat energy to produce and upgrade. So when I considered this becoming active in in this research effort, I thought about my history and investment of time in the oil and gas development and kind of keeping that ball rolling for the state. And I thought, you know, one of the things we might be forced to do, either by federal or state regulations or perhaps by global commitments, to keep our oil flowing, we may need to do carbon capture on the back end of our gas compression and power plants. And that's an opportunity that is now no longer being outlaws. We've got the laws and processes established to make that possible.

So the last bullet here is talking about unlocking reliable, affordable, low-carbon rail belt power generation using abundant coal resources. And I would like to invite everyone to a reception and project review that we're having later on this afternoon. This work session at conference ends around 2 today. Starting at 2:30, at 49th State Brewing, we're gonna have a deeper project review of the Alaska Rail Belt carbon capture and storage project update. So the university is almost wrapping up with— by September, we'll be completed with this 2-year project.

It's an $11 million study in northern Cook Inlet. And what the opportunity that we're I mentioned earlier is it's a coal-fired power plant as a— and two of the Choogatch Electric's natural gas power plants as potential CO2 sources. What the university is doing is looking at the subsurface storage opportunity below the Beluga River gas field and what are the pipeline systems and permitting and project and also public engagement steps that are needed to take that from an opportunity to a project. I will say we will be having some really good food available. And we will be having some CO2 carbonated beverage themed mocktails available.

My favorite is called the Spruce Springsteen Born to Be Stored mocktail.

So like I say, that will be— this is 6 to 8. We have two separate project reviews. The first is at 2:30 and the second is at 6:00 PM. But we'd love to talk more about the geology. And engineering and pipeline transportation there.

I would like to close my remarks with a thank you to the folks, especially like Laura, who came up from Louisiana, shared the CCS panel yesterday. And my one-word takeaway from that session was just wow. They have seen a resurgence in development there. One of the gentlemen said they hadn't seen that level of activity in 50 years. And it's because of the great interest in carbon capture that is along the Gulf Coast in that area.

So thank you for sharing your learnings and for making the trip here. So, all right. Thank you.

Well just as we kick off I think we have probably about 20-25 minutes for questions as we kick that off. I want to say one— second thanks to states like Louisiana who've done so much to help educate Alaska you know and share information. We had a lot of partnerships across US states tremendously helpful. And second, for those of you in the audience at DNR, please, we should limit our sequestration of mocktails at 2:30. We should aim for the 6 to 8 PM session for those of us on the clock.

You're a tough boss, man. Just don't tell the Commissioner's Office about it if you're educating yourself at 2:30.

So I think we'll have some questions. Questions here for our distinguished panelists, but I want to make sure the audience is getting the information and issues addressed that you'd like. I think Sean has microphones. We give at least everybody a chance to open up the questions if there's one that immediately presents. Otherwise, I'll throw a few out and get the juices flowing.

Please. Sure. I'm going to get the microphone.

No, no, he's coming your way.

Where are you?

Yeah, my name is Bernie Smith, and I was interested in the coal plant and what you had to say about that. And how would you— I mean, your coal— if you have a coal-powered plant, it's not going to be near an injection well, more than likely. So how would you get the CO2 to the injection well? How would that work? I mean, what's the process of taking a coal plant and then putting a CO2 injection plant next to it?

Where would where would you put it? I guess that's for you. Yeah, thanks for the question. And we'll be sharing the maps and routing diagrams at this session here across the street at 49th State. But in short, the concept that's being— that is unlocked by carbon capture and sequestration is what's called a mine-mouth power plant.

So you have a mineral lease which is full of coal. You build a plant there locally, and so you minimize transportation of that coal. And that plant generates and ships electrons, electricity, and it ships CO2 via pipeline. So just a pipeline And in this particular location, there is a permitted transportation corridor that's already in existence that the Donlin Line was before the Cook Inlet gas shortfall was looming. They went through the whole environmental impact statement process reviewing, and there is an existing corridor from— that runs right past the mine location down to Tidewater and the— near the Beluga River gas field where there's a— something like 500-megawatt power plant there that's been historically.

So our project would have a pipeline injected beneath those existing gas fields and sequester it there.

Just to unpack that a little bit more, you know, it is a topic that was discussed, just a little commentary from the moderator, discussed a lot in the legislation because in a lot of the lower 48 states there is significant transportation of carbon dioxide once it's captured. You have an industrial facility, you have different chemical processes produce pure streams of CO2, so you really don't even have to do much capturing, but you need to get it somewhere that has a appropriate geologic storage. So there's been operating CO2 pipelines in the lower 48, I think in some cases for decades, even in Wyoming. But something we could look at here. We also have the reality we have a lot of sedimentary basins in Alaska, some of which are very prolific with hydrocarbons, but there may even be opportunities for interior storage for areas around existing plants that haven't necessarily seen oil and gas development.

So it's part of why we did that work to to make all the hub site information available. But there's a lot of areas we just don't know a lot about in Alaska. So it's exciting to think that people will have a chance to have the framework in place to justify some characterization work to see if there's sequestration opportunities right next to our current facilities.

Great idea, the source versus at the end of a distribution system, cars, factories, and I think it's best at the source. You talked about the slope. Isn't that, I guess, a question about the big project, the LNG project? That's gas coming off of there as a sales item, and you wouldn't be putting the carbon back into that gas cap if you're eventually, I know it's Thompson's the area, but which potentially you could be selling that gas later on. You wouldn't put it in the same reservoir you're going to sell down the road, are you?

I mean, put carbon back in there? I think we'll turn this to Frank Pasquale who studied these very questions in the former—. I think that's what the pressure is about. Yeah, so thanks for the question.

Alaska LNG project, near resources, known resources, proved developed resources are the Point Thompson gas field in Prudhoe Bay, which have 4.5% and 12.5% CO2 indigenous gas, CO2 concentrations. Those would be joined up at the central gas facility and a new facility would be built, the gas treatment plant. And at the 3.8 BCF a day LNG feedstock methane rate, that would generate a 400 million cubic feet per day CO2 stream. That presents a tremendous opportunity for enhanced oil recovery. I was working— yes, talking yesterday, it felt like work, at the conference here with an expert in corrosion integrity management.

And the surprising thing that I learned is that the Koparek field, it— with CO2 EOR would not be expected to see corrosion. That the small presence of hydrogen sulfide in the stream would plate out on the metal and the wells and the surface pipeline and the processing plants. So that opens the door, that $400 million. So, and the opportunity for enhanced oil recovery to all of those fields is huge and needs to see further work and understand the opportunity. Oh, backing up a little bit.

CO2 is an excellent cleaning fluid. In—. If you go to Europe and you get your shirt dry cleaned or your dress dry cleaned, it will more than likely be cleaned by carbon dioxide. They put them in a tub, pressurize it with CO2. It's— when you pull it out, it's perfectly clean because it's an excellent solvent and it does the same thing in the oil fields.

Europe switched to just carbon dioxide dry cleaning from using, you know, pretty heavy solvents, liquid solvents, because it's safer, it's cleaner, and it's relatively available. So if I had my druthers, I'd like to see enhanced oil recovery with that CO2. I think the common terminology is beneficial reuse. Absolutely. The, the current approved plan for the gas treatment plant facilities, and this was approved by the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in the year 2015, is to take that 400 million a day and re-inject it back into the Prudhoe Bay formation oil in the farthest west side and the W and Z pad in the EWI area with a secondary spur to the Point McIntyre field, which by that time they're expected to be largely, um, largely depleted.

Yeah, flooding it. And so that provides enough, you know, you talk about projects like this, you need to have like highly reliable systems operations, and having 2 injection points gives you that redundancy. But by reinjecting it in Prudhoe, it does support the pressure of the system, but it— the maximum processing capacity of 25% of the production facilities means you have to like continuously walk away. Your existing producers will be shut in. I should probably stop there.

But, but that's the, that's the current plan, is the, is the reinjection. And the people who designed the plan that, that I worked with for major gas sales said we need to have a sure plan that we can bank on, and that's reinjection into the, into the existing oil fields, mainly for storage. But enhanced oil recovery is the upside that they always hoped for. Yeah, thank you for that answer. And I just would add on a little bit there is that, you know, we— field's mature, technology's mature, and it's, you know, it's one of these exciting problems to have.

If we have that CO2 stream at scale, we have the framework in place on the state statutory side, we'll have the AOGCC regulatory framework in in place, have federal tax credit commercial support, you know, that we have more things on the table to work with to benefit the state and our export capacity long term. So it's— and we have a lot of smart people working on these very technical questions. I saw another hand. Yeah, so first of all, thank you all for your kind words about Louisiana. I'm glad that someone has found our chaos to be instructive.

And this may be a foolish question coming from someone from a non-seismically active state, but we've seen instances in Louisiana where we have gas storage facilities, particularly salt caverns, that have lost integrity because of a fault shearing the casing, which then presented some serious challenges for remediation of the well. Are you all concerned, you know, obviously with Alaska's much higher seismic activity than the Gulf Coast, about the potential impacts for mechanical integrity either for the injector or for like artificial penetrations within the AOR? Yeah. Jerry McCabe? Well, I guess I could start.

You know, we've been asked that question before, Laura, and two things. I don't recall a well being sheared off. By a seismic event.

And then I'm told by geologists— some of my great friends— that faults actually— if there's a seismic event where a fault shifts, it actually increases the resistance to fluid flow across that fault. In other words, those rocks grind together and actually destroy any permeability that might have already been there. So that's what the geologists tell me. So I actually had the different, the opposite in my head, just like, you know, that, oh, an earthquake could cause something to leak. Could actually be the opposite.

If we had a well shear off, we'd have to go in and squeeze it, cement it, plug and abandon it, you know, like we normally would any other well. So we would know about that through observation and monitoring. So— but you're right, big earthquakes, we have a lot of them. Guys? Is that kind of how you see it?

Yeah, just another comment from the moderator. Not a geologist, just a paper pusher. So talk to the geologists who work at the Department for the real details. We discussed this question quite a bit in our legislative presentation because Alaska is clearly seismically active. There has been questions about seismic— inferred seismic activity with other subsurface activities around the country.

And, you know, one of the things that our folks came back to is, you know, we have the world's— functionally one of the world's largest earthquakes ever in 19— the Good Friday quake in 1906. 1964, And we didn't see large-scale hydrocarbon migration out of these same reservoirs at that time, which is a pretty good indicator. And then we know that that kind of seismic activity has persisted across geologic time while these reservoirs were accumulated. So we have kind of that demonstrated past experience, and we have a very active team who— we pay close attention to seismicity in Alaska for a lot of reasons. Primarily because it can, you know, tip things over on your shelf or worse.

And so we have a lot of folks studying seismicity generally, and it's been a topic that we've looked at— that the State Geological Survey has looked at quite a bit. It's important to note, John, that most of our seismic activity is in the Cook Inlet area. The North Slope, 800 miles away, is generally considered very seismically stable and inactive. So, you know, depends on where we're doing this work, but you're right, it is something to be aware of. Yeah.

And one final thing, and I'll let Frank— you know, a lot of that goes to the reservoir monitoring. You know, we— a big part of the program when storage facilities go into place is the assessment and tracking of the migration of the plume. Obviously, we'll be see a discrete seismic event, you know, we'd have to work to actively monitor through that and after that. So to build on those comments, one of the key benefits that I see for the state of Alaska getting primacy is that we have people then reviewing the projects that know the local local geology. Instead of going to EPA Region 10 geoscientists, we go to folks who've worked here for decades and they know about well construction and they know about faults and seismic and the local geology.

So really appreciate the AOGCC's efforts seeking primacy And I think that that will be hugely beneficial because as Alaskans, being safe and keeping operations secure is number one, right? Protecting the land and protecting the people. With the specifics about the seismic hazards, the University I&E website, we have shared present— brief analysis of seismicity and its potential impacts on CCS operations that actually Dr. Barrett Salisbury at the DNR Division of Geological Geophysical prepared. And so that's available for your review. It certainly acknowledges that the south-central region is one of the most active seismic regions on the planet, but Barrett's observations of the seismicity is the places where fractures and faults are expressed.

This is in a subduction zone where, where the Pacific plate is going underneath the North American plate. Those are deep and then expressed pressions of faults terminate usually at like 40 kilometers below the surface. So his expectation was not putting, you know, storage facilities which are nominally, say, 10 kilometers below the surface in jeopardy. But you're welcome to— I could share the report site location that we have published. Thank you.

I see another question which will prevent me from asking about more of the mocktail names, but maybe we'll get those off the record. Hopefully a quick question. With all the interest in natural gas storage in Cook Inlet, does carbon storage compete with natural gas storage or is that not an issue?

I don't think it's an issue. There's lots of capacity down there for natural gas storage. And, you know, I guess I could maybe a little sidebar here. You know, we've had a couple of really cold winters here, as the governor referred to in his remarks. And NSTAR operates the Cinksa facility, which stands for Cook Inlet Natural Gas Storage.

And then, of course, there's gas storage available also at Beluga. And from everything I know, there's lots of capacity. And then like I said, the Kenai Gas Field, which I've been told is pretty much depleted, then that could be a potential CO2 storage reservoir in Cook Inlet. So, you know, and then of course, if we get a gas pipeline built, it has plenty of capacity. Then maybe the storage, the natural gas storage concern probably would be diminished.

But right now, I've been a huge proponent of NStar and Hillcourt, put as much gas as you possibly can in Sinksa and Beluga so that when we get to February, March, April, I don't know about you, but my furnace is still running. It's impressive. I'm like, when is summer coming? You know, and so we want to make sure that we have lots of natural gas. And if I may, Mr. Chairman of the session, the one thing we never ever, ever want to have happen is run short.

Amen. Yeah, I mean, what I mean is not just brownouts or, you know, having to turn down your thermostat or whatever. But if your house actually ran short of gas, like it depressurized, you'd have to turn off everything, turn off everything, which, you know, hot water heater, dryer, stove, you know, furnace, the whole, the whole nine yards has to be shut off. And then I didn't know this till NSTAR explained it to me. So they have to shut off a whole community And then when the supply is somehow restored, they have to come to each house and basically purge the oxygen from those lines because oxygen and natural gas is an explosive mixture.

And they have to purge all that oxygen out to, to the dryer, to the stove, to the furnace, to the hot water heater individually. And it can take weeks and months to restore a community to, uh, to full service. So I, I didn't know— I think that's— I got pretty far into the weeds, John, but I didn't know that. And I want everybody that'll listen to know that we do not want to run short of natural gas, and, uh, because it's a really bad situation. And I think that happened in Chile or somewhere.

And you can read about it. Anyway, I'll stop there. But now that I scared you. Amen. I can guarantee you the Department of Natural Resources will not be creating conflicts between carbon storage and natural gas storage.

And creating issues like that. But I think that the abundance of geologic space is something we look at and are confident in. I think that that's just a great reminder why some of these issues are so important. Energy supply is so important and natural gas supply is so important, as we heard in the main stage just recently. I think we're really right at time.

We may have time for one more question.

Anybody else in the audience?

Hearing and seeing none, I just would say thank you very much to our panelists. You know, they both have been doing tremendous work on the technical details, working with the experts both in-state and out-of-state and also with the public. We've had a lot of public engagement that's been facilitated by the university and facilitated by AOGCC with their public comment period that's been meeting recently. And so it's creating an understanding of the CCUS opportunities in Alaska and how to do it safely and responsibly, so it's exciting. And I guess I would close— you know, Frank mentioned a little bit about some of the projects he's working on.

We do have a few other things and, you know, we have a variety of companies looking at opportunities on the slope, both associated with large-scale gas commercialization and otherwise. We also have some exciting projects kind of in South Central and other areas, including some international folks who are looking at CO2 imports from Japan and Korea. And it's been really encouraging to see the level of sophistication and interest from those foreign partners and allies. So, We have a lot of opportunities ahead and we're going to do everything we can at the department to be ready and seize the day and work with AOGCC as they do the technical stuff and work with the brainiacs at the universities. We're open for business, as folks have been saying, and thanks for listening.

Good to have you. I'm going to bring you along on every panel, Frank. Okay, thanks. Yeah, if I can't answer it, Frank can. Bruce brings the importance to order.

I was going to tell Laura that, you know, there is a chaos theory event.