Tourmaline Subsidiary Proposes Natural Gas Data Centre in Alberta

Is proposing to build a power-generation facility and data centre called Malachite One on Crown land adjacent to Tourmaline’s Banshee Gas Plant about 40 km southwest of Edson in Yellowhead County, Alberta, Cbc reported. The facility would convert 150 million cubic feet of natural gas daily into one gigawatt of electricity.

The data centre would serve as a warehouse for computer equipment that processes data at high speeds.

Emerald Energy Technologies is proposing to build the Yellowhead facility as early as 2027. The power-generation facility could cost up to $5 billion and the data-centre infrastructure up to $15 billion, according to Tourmaline Oil Corp. Construction is expected to employ several hundred short-term workers.

Once operational, the data centre is projected to create 300 to 500 long-term jobs and the power-generation facility 40 to 60 permanent positions. The proposed site is right off Highway 47, close to the hamlet of Robb. Fibre-optic cables already in place can transport data across Canada and the United States.

Tourmaline is considering an optional carbon-sequestration component that would compress carbon dioxide, turn it into a liquid, and inject it 3,700 metres underground. Tourmaline is currently drilling a sequestration well adjacent to its existing Banshee Gas Plant.

Malachite One’s water usage from the Embarras River would be limited to 1.74 per cent of annual flow rates and from the McLeod River to 0.19 per cent.

Combined water withdrawal from both rivers would equal about 50 litres per second. The data centre would be cooled using a closed-loop system that does not actively consume fresh water, with water used primarily for the process that turns natural gas into electricity. For every one litre of water the project uses, about 1.5 litres will be returned into the atmosphere as vapour.