REGINA - An independent study says CO2 from an oil company's carbon capture operation is not leaking at a Saskatchewan farm.
The International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-CO2) tested soil, gas and water samples from the Kerr family farm near Weyburn.
The centre says in a 180-page report that the CO2 injected by Cenovus Energy (TSX:CVE) is not the source of gas found on the farm. It says the carbon dioxide measured in soil, gases or groundwater samples was naturally occurring. That was determined by looking at the ratio of gases.
"You can have a high level of carbon dioxide, but if it's high in a proper ratio with oxygen and nitrogen and other soil gases, then you know that it's normal. It comes from normal plant activity," said centre CEO Carmen Dybwad.
"It can be high and be completely out of whack with those other gases, which would be an indication that probably it comes from someplace else. What we found is that the ratio of the soil gases indicated that it was a biologic source, so a natural or normal level of CO2 in the soil."
The Regina-based centre investigated after Cameron and Jane Kerr said in January that CO2 was sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.
The Kerrs said that in 2005 they began noticing algae blooms, clots of foam and multicoloured scum in two ponds at the bottom of a gravel quarry on their land. Sometimes, the ponds bubbled. The said small animals -- cats, rabbits and goats -- were regularly found dead a few metres away.
The Kerrs own land above the Weyburn oilfield in southeastern Saskatchewan.
They released their own consultant's report that linked high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their soil to 6,000 tonnes of the gas injected underground every day by Cenovus.
Cenovus pumps CO2 into the aging Weyburn field to push more oil out of the ground in what's called enhanced oil recovery. It also traps the greenhouse gas underground rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere.
The Calgary-based oil company hired several third-party specialists to do an assessment and their report released last month said the carbon dioxide is staying put in the ground.
IPAC-CO2 put together an international team of experts who said the evidence clearly showed the CO2 is from natural biologic processes.
They found that the film on gravel pits and in the Kerr well was not a petroleum product, but instead was floating colonies of iron-reducing and iron-oxidizing bacteria. Well water also met Saskatchewan's drinking water quality standards, the team said.
Dybwad said a series of different tests showed the same thing.
She said there's nothing to discourage carbon capture projects from proceeding.
"It's a substance that actually I think is far more dangerous if we keep releasing it into the air than if we put it back in the ground where it basically came from."
She said she has no concerns about the land.
"We didn't test for anything else, so I have no idea what other issues there might be there," she said. "But I grew up on the farm. I was out there. I saw nothing untoward. So in other words if they said...'We're giving you this land, would you move in or, better yet, would you move your child and grandchildren out here?'
"I'd say yes."
