Author:
Former President/CEO
International CCS Knowledge Centre
Mike Monea,
Former President/CEO
International CCS Knowledge Centre
Michael (Mike) Monea grew up in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada with a passion for geology which has fuelled his career path to date. He holds designations as a Professional Engineer, Professional Geoscientist and is a member of the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors. His entrepreneurial vision is the root of his past successes in developing companies and overseeing the construction of megaprojects.
Mike is the former President and CEO of the International CCS Knowledge Centre a non-profit organization which he helped to establish with BHP Billiton and SaskPower. This new initiative represents a culmination of Mike’s hard work as the president of Carbon capture and storage initiatives at SaskPower where he was in charge of creating and building the world’s first carbon capture plant for a coal electric unit valued at $1.5 billion CDN.
As a world-leading scientist, research and development is a key component in Mike’s mission to help reduce greenhouse gases through CCS technologies. His oversight of a scale-sized Carbon Capture Test Facility has ensured that progress continues to be made with international vendors on post-combustion capture systems. Progress gained in these areas can help reduce costs and advance CCS.
Mike’s past experience in oil and gas has allowed him to understand the benefits of and opportunities for carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and deep saline reservoir storage. Mike secured sales of CO2 from the Boundary Dam CCS Facility to oil fields in Southern Saskatchewan. Early on in his professional career he was trained in oil and gas operations in United States and went on to create two oil and gas companies, Nautilus Exploration and Associated Ltd. (in 1982) and Flatland Exploration Ltd. (in 1999). He had the opportunity to develop EOR procedures as the head of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC), amongst other processes for the oil and gas industry.
Throughout his career, Mike has understood the importance of partnerships at a local, national and international level. In 2006, Mike formed a Chinese investment company and since then has worked with most power, oil and regulatory agencies in China on CCS knowledge transfer. Mike has travelled the world speaking on CCS and is a sought-after panellist and advisor for this ground-breaking technology.
Mike is now the President of the Monea-CCS Services Ltd.
I have been asked numerous times for a response to a news article (CBC, Fri. Nov. 3, 2017) where SaskPower CEO, Mike Marsh references that the utility may be reluctant to recommend CCS.
SaskPower released a clarifying statement to Saskatchewan media immediately following the CBC article - to read coverage of the statement, click here.
As for the International CCS Knowledge Centre, it is business as usual. We are committed to sharing the expertise and lessons learned from CCS at BD3. We have a solid working relationship with the experts at SaskPower and Boundary Dam – who continue to be active in retooling and upping the game in innovation for CCS on the large commercial scale facility.
CCS - as a cleantech tool (among other tools in the toolbox) with the potential to take large bites out of greenhouse gas emissions, is our focus is to ensure that CCS is advanced and deployed commercially and globally.
That is why we are actively supporting China’s efforts to balance a need for energy security with their commitment to substantially reduce emissions. CCS, through the lessons of BD3’s commercial operations will help China meet these targets. To learn more about our MOU’s in China, click here. We look forward to signing a further MOU and moving toward deployment in December 2017.
We are also hosting a pavilion featuring CCUS at the Globe Forum in Vancouver, March 14-16, 2018. This conference, that showcases clean technologies, will have up to 30 exhibits at the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Technology Cluster as well as a CCUS knowledge program with a full day of speakers and panelists on advancing CCUS now. We are inviting our industry fellows, researchers, innovators, and those interested in large scale deployment to join us. If you’d like more information on how to be a part of the CCUS at the Globe Forum, please visit www.globeseries.com or contact Cynthia.shore@globeseries.com directly.
If you have any questions about the International CCS Knowledge Centre and/or our initiatives, please don’t hesitate to contact me or the colleagues in my office directly. Here is the link to our contact information.
Kind regards,
Mike
