Leveraging decades of collective experience for carbon capture and storage

June 26, 2025

As a geotechnical engineer, Dale Walters has spent the better part of the past three decades deep beneath the earth’s surface. 

“Well, I’m not literally working underground but a lot of the projects in my career involve subsurface work, whether that’s drilling to extract oil and gas or injecting steam or water beneath the surface and ensuring they are contained,” says Walters, who works as Canadian Natural’s geomechanical manager and is based very much above ground in a downtown Calgary office tower. “What’s exciting is we can apply those same technologies and processes we’ve used to produce oil to also safely capture and store CO₂ underground.” 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) was in its infancy as a technology at the start of Walters’ career, with the first large-scale CO₂ sequestration project commissioned in 1996 in the North Sea’s Sleipner gas field off the coast of Norway. Fast forward to today, the Global CCS Institute’s 2024 annual report listed 50 projects operating around the world, with the capacity to capture 51 million tonnes per annum of CO₂. That includes five projects in Canada, including the Quest CCS Project at the Scotford complex northeast of Edmonton, and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which collects CO₂ at industrial sites northeast of Edmonton and stores it in a carbon hub near Red Deer. 

Walters has seen similar growth in steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technology in the oil sands. Commercial production using SAGD technology first started in 2001 and it’s currently the most widely used in-situ recovery method, according to the Government of Canada. The SAGD process involves injecting steam deep underground to a bitumen deposit. The steam heats the bitumen so it becomes less thick and can be pumped to the surface for processing.  

“The same processes and technologies used in SAGD apply to CCS because you need to ensure safe containment of the steam to deliver it deep below the surface as well as safely bringing up the bitumen,” says Walters, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in civil engineering from the University of Calgary. “We will bring that experience to bear for the proposed Pathways Alliance foundational project as well as learning from established CCS operations. What these established CCS operations show is Alberta has the right geology to safely store CO₂ underground. They also demonstrate how we can leverage our experience, technology and processes, and apply them to carbon sequestration.” 

Part of that experience also includes working with regulators as well as engaging with Indigenous communities and other stakeholders to answer questions about the project. 

“Storing CO₂ underground is a new concept for people but we’ve safely stored water and injected steam into the earth for decades,” he says. “We have been taking oil and natural gas out of the ground for years. At first, people might have had concerns about the activities but over time, people become more comfortable once they see it’s done safely.” 

While Walters and a team of dedicated experts from Pathways Alliance six member companies are evaluating the sequestration hub that will store CO₂ in an underground, sandstone formation near Cold Lake, Alberta, his Canadian Natural colleague Shivendra Raghuwanshi is part of a team helping to design the 600 kilometres of pipelines that will take the CO₂ from oil sands facilities near Fort McMurray to the sequestration hub. The proposed Pathways CO₂ Transportation Network and Storage Hub Project is currently in its engineering and design phase and is contingent on sufficient fiscal and policy supports as well as regulatory approvals to proceed.  

The project’s scale is unprecedented but excites Raghuwanshi, who has spent 25 years designing, building and operating pipelines around the world. 

“My career started in India, but I’ve also worked in Indonesia, Kuwait and the Netherlands as well as here in North America,” says Raghuwanshi, who serves as the lead for the Pathways pipeline project. “I’ve had the chance to work on several sizeable pipeline projects at Canadian Natural, which really helped me understand the company’s values and unique approach to project execution. I feel fortunate to now be part of the Pathways project—it’s a meaningful opportunity. And we have a great deal of in-house expertise as our company manages almost 90,000 kilometres of pipelines that handle various commodities.” 

The pipeline project group—which includes experts from all six Pathways member companies— has partnered with research facilities to ensure the pipeline is safe, reliable, and built to last. 

“CO₂ is a different commodity than, say, natural gas or crude oil, so we have reached out to leading experts across the globe, including teams already operating CO₂ pipelines here in Alberta. Their insights helped us identify potential challenges early to address them in our design from the start,” says Raghuwanshi, who holds postgraduate degrees in mechanical engineering. “We are also partnering with top research facilities in the world to understand pipeline design challenges specific to CO_2..”  

Raghuwanshi also chairs the CO₂ Task Force committee, part of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). That committee is working on developing a specific section for CO₂ pipeline design, which will eventually be part of CSA’s Z662-2027 edition. CO₂ is currently considered a regular substance within the existing code.  

“The lessons learned from the project have been integrated into the CO₂ clause development,” he says. “With this project, we now have a chance to help the industry evolve and benefit Canada.” 

Walters echoes that sentiment. 

“CCS is not the only solution, but it is an important technology for industry to prevent the release of CO₂ emissions,” he says. “Although not a new technology, we are being innovative in the way we are collaborating across the oil sands sector, advancing on our current knowledge of CCS and applying the technology at the scale we are.  

“Being a part of this project and the oil and gas industry is exciting because we are making a difference in advancing environmental innovations.”