Origins will store up to 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and capture none of it.
The capture happens at the far end of a pipe, inside the North West Redwater Partnership Sturgeon Refinery and the Nutrien Redwater fertilizer plant in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. That work started on 2 June 2020. The two plants hand roughly 4,000 tonnes a day to the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, which Wolf Midstream owns and operates, and the line runs south to Clive. Enhance Energy broke ground on 9 September 2026 on the last stage in that chain, the stage that puts a tonne into rock and leaves it.
Four operations share one name in most accounts of this business. Capture pulls carbon dioxide out of a process stream. Transport compresses it to a dense phase and pushes it through steel. Use injects it into a producing oil field, where it dissolves into the crude and drops the viscosity until barrels move toward a well. Storage injects it into a formation held under a carbon sequestration agreement, with no production target attached to the injection. The first three have run in central Alberta for more than six years. The fourth starts in January 2027.
Key facts
- Natural Resources Canada announced on 9 September 2026 that construction had begun on the Origins Carbon Capture Storage Hub near Clive, Alberta, with an initial capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
- Natural Resources Canada states the Origins hub is scheduled to enter service in January 2027.
- The Government of Alberta reports the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line has captured and stored more than 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide since 2020, and the Quest project more than 10 million tonnes since 2015.
- The Government of Alberta lists the Quest project’s capacity at 1.08 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line’s pipeline capacity at 14.6 million tonnes a year.
- The Government of Alberta selected the Enhance Energy Origins Project on 31 March 2022 as one of six carbon sequestration hub proposals shortlisted for the Edmonton region.
Why Origins captures no carbon dioxide
The capture plant is the expensive item in this chain and it is already built. The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line system cost about $1.2 billion, with $223 million from the Government of Alberta and $63 million from federal programs. The line was sized for 14.6 million tonnes a year and has been running near 10% of that rating, which is about 1.46 million tonnes a year by our arithmetic. Origins is the terminal equipment for a system that has operated below its design number since the day it started.
Nobody is adding a new capture train at Redwater this year. Enhance Energy is adding injection wells and monitoring equipment at the Clive end so the same molecules can go somewhere different. The tonne does not change. The destination does.
What the 8 million tonnes under Clive actually did
The figure moving around on 10 September 2026 is more than 9 million tonnes stored since 2020. The Government of Alberta puts the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line at more than 8 million tonnes since 2020. Enhance Energy’s own operations page says close to 8 million tonnes. Use 8 million. Across the six years and three months between 2 June 2020 and 9 September 2026 that works out to roughly 1.3 million tonnes a year, which is our arithmetic, and which sits about where a line running at 10% of its rating should sit.
Those tonnes went into the Clive Nisku and Leduc pools, which are depleted oil reservoirs, for enhanced oil recovery. The carbon dioxide stayed down. Oil came up. Both things are true, and the second one is why the first one was affordable, because the barrels paid for the wells and the monitoring that a pure storage project has to fund some other way. Anyone who calls that arrangement a trick has not read a reservoir report. Anyone who calls it identical to dedicated sequestration has not read the tenure rules.
Alberta separates the two on purpose. An operator that wants credit for permanent storage takes an evaluation agreement first, proves the formation holds, then signs a carbon sequestration agreement that grants injection rights and carries monitoring obligations. Origins was shortlisted on 31 March 2022 as one of six hub proposals for the Edmonton region and has been working through that sequence since. The regulatory file is the difference between a tonne that counts as sequestered and a tonne that counts as used.
Why the largest label survives the arithmetic
On annual storage capacity the superlative holds. Origins is rated at 1.5 million tonnes a year. The Government of Alberta lists Quest at 1.08 million tonnes a year. Shell’s Polaris project at Scotford, sanctioned in 2024, is designed for about 650,000 tonnes a year. Natural Resources Canada called Origins the “largest carbon capture and storage project in Canada” on 9 September 2026, and on that one measure the arithmetic agrees with the press release.
On tonnes already in the ground the ranking flips, and it stays flipped for a long time. Quest has stored more than 10 million tonnes since November 2015 into the Basal Cambrian Sands, a saline formation sitting 2,000 to 2,500 metres down with no oil target above it. Origins has stored nothing. Running at its full rating from January 2027, Origins needs six years and eight months to reach 10 million tonnes, and that is our arithmetic rather than the operator’s.
Two numbers do the work the word biggest was doing. Quest has more than 10 million tonnes underground. Origins has a permit for 1.5 million tonnes a year and zero tonnes stored.
