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Bilton nabs big carbon contract

An Innisfail company has won a contract to provide a key component for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line.

An Innisfail company has won a contract to provide a key component for the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line.

Bilton Welding and Manufacturing has been chosen to manufacture a pressure vessel for the proposed line, which will carry CO2 from the Industrial Heartland region near Fort Saskatchewan to a site near Clive.

Bilton’s contribution to the project, a wet carbon dioxide inlet separator, will remove CO2 from the various liquids it’s commingled with.

“This vessel basically allows time and space to do that,” explained Jason Greene, sales and marketing manager with Bilton.

It will be about 10.4 metres (34 feet) long and have a diameter of 2.6 metres (8.5 feet). His company has done much larger builds, said Greene, but this project is appealing for other reasons.

“What was more important to us was its application, not the size.”

The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line is being developed by Enhance Energy Inc. to take CO2 from big industrial emitters and use it for the stimulation of mature oilfields in Central Alberta.

Agrium Inc. and North West Upgrading Inc. have already committed to provide CO2, with other companies expected to add more.

At 240 km in length and with an annual capacity of 14.6 million tonnes, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line will be the largest such project ever undertaken.

Its anticipated cost is $1.2 billion, with the Alberta and Canadian governments pledging $495 million and $63.3 million respectively.

Enhance Energy president and CEO Susan Cole told the Advocate recently that she expects construction to take place in 2013, with commissioning by the end of that year.

“Having fabricated many pressure vessels for the various stages and processes involved in both conventional and unconventional oil and gas recovery and transmission, we feel this project is a great opportunity to get involved with, and will have a substantial impact on the energy landscape in Western Canada,” said Greene.

Bilton has already been working with Enhance Energy for a number of months, and will be involved in the separator project from the design phase right through to fabrication.

“Bilton’s expertise and attention to detail make us confident that the service and products they provide will ultimately advance the project’s overall execution,” said Blair Eddy, vice-president of operations with Enhance Energy.

Bilton designs, engineers and manufactures custom energy equipment. This project, and a number of others that it’s working on, has prompted the company to undertake a major expansion of one of the half-dozen fabrication shops it operates in Innisfail.

It’s adding nearly 15,000 square feet, with the new area to measure some 18 metres (60 feet) in height — space that’s needed given the scale of the work Bilton is now doing.

“Most of the equipment that we’re building is for the oilsands, and it’s for tanks of a substantial size — 3,000 barrels,” said Greene.

The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line vessel is expected to take eight to 10 months to complete.

“We’ll get into the fabrication phase in the winter,” said Greene. “It’s going to coincide right when our new expansion is going to be ready here.”

The addition, he said, should result in nearly 45 full-time positions being created over the next six months.

hrichards@www.reddeeradvocate.com