Alberta Crude Gets a Carbon Capture Upgrade

A Boston startup's steam-generating CCS tech could cut carbon capture costs in half at an Alberta oil sands operation

14 Apr 2026

A Boston-based startup is testing a novel approach to carbon capture in Alberta's oil sands, one designed not merely to reduce emissions but to generate a useful energy byproduct in the process, potentially reshaping the economics of industrial decarbonization.

Mantel Capture announced in December 2025 that it had launched an engineering and design study with an unnamed steam-assisted gravity drainage producer near Cold Lake, Alberta, roughly 300 kilometers northeast of Edmonton. The project, backed by Alberta Innovates, the province's clean technology Crown corporation, targets annual capture of 60,000 tonnes of CO2. Alberta Innovates has not disclosed the financial terms of its support.

What distinguishes Mantel's approach is its treatment of thermal energy. Conventional carbon capture systems consume large quantities of heat to operate; Mantel's technology produces it, generating an estimated 150,000 tonnes of high-pressure steam per year as a byproduct of the capture process. In SAGD operations, where continuous steam injection is central to extracting bitumen from the subsurface, that output has direct commercial value. Chief Executive Cameron Halliday has said the design can reduce capture costs by roughly 50 percent compared to conventional systems, though that figure has not been independently verified.

Alberta's regulatory environment has made it an attractive destination for carbon capture developers. The province combines a price on industrial carbon emissions with federal investment tax credits for capture infrastructure, a pairing that, analysts say, gives operators both a financial incentive and a policy signal to act. Still, CCS projects in the oil sands have historically faced questions about timeline, scalability, and whether emissions reductions justify continued hydrocarbon production.

The engineering study is expected to conclude by late 2026, after which a final investment decision would follow, with commercial operations potentially beginning by the late 2020s. Though independent of the Oil Sands Pathways Alliance's larger decarbonization initiative, Halliday suggested the proposed Pathways CO2 pipeline, if constructed, could eventually allow smaller projects like Mantel's to connect to a shared transport network. Whether the technology can scale beyond a single pilot, and whether the economics hold under commercial conditions, remains to be seen.