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InnoTech Alberta recently received a $1.85 million grant from the Clean Resource Innovation Network.

The grant, which was part of the network's reducing environmental footprint technology competition is being used to look at alternative technologies for well remediation, closure and to prevent methane leakage from abandoned well bores.

Estimates suggest there are over 90, 000 inactive wells in Alberta alone, with approximately 54,000 wells leaking methane into the atmosphere in Alberta and Canada. In addition, there are close to 258,000 wells that will be inactive within the next 10 years that need sub surface closure activity before the wells can then be remediated at surface and the facilities can be taken out.

We talk with Bonnie Drozdowski, director of environmental services and Fred Wassmuth, manager of Institute Recovery about this project. We also dive into other projects InnoTech Alberta are working on.

Bios

Bonnie Drozdowski

Bonnie has ten years of experience managing and participating in multifaceted projects including integrating business and science to generate creative practical solutions and business opportunities in the environmental industry in Canada in various different industries including, upstream oil and gas, mineable and in-situ oil sands, coal mining, sand and gravel, diamond mining, forestry, pulp and paper and waste management. 

Her key areas of interest include: soil and water conservation; waste and soil management; reclamation and remediation; & emerging technologies applicable to the environmental industry. She is primarily interested in opportunities that will allow her to use her strong technical background in environmental sciences while focusing on a high performance culture and innovative and effective project execution.

Fred Wassmuth

Fred has a broad background in investigating unconventional oil recovery, in particular improved waterflooding heavy oil, enhanced tight oil recovery and the application of conformance control technologies. 

He's been involved with traditional chemical flooding methods such as polymer and various surfactant processes, and focused his efforts on several field projects to demonstrate the commercial application of improved water flooding heavy oils in Western Canada. More recently, he started a joint industry research program on improving oil recovery from tight reservoirs. His team includes engineers, geologists, chemists, and physicists with the objective to develop enhanced oil recovery processes. The team has devised a set of sequential evaluations that move the technology from concept to the field application.

Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.