Valuable carbon dioxide made in Coal Country will soon be going to Canada.

All of the remaining available CO2 produced at Dakota Gasification Co. will be piped to Saskatchewan next year.

It will be injected into an aging oil field to enhance recovery of crude, same as the initial share of carbon dioxide gas going to Canada now. The gas forces wells to give up oil that would otherwise not get pumped and adds as much as two decades of economic life to a field.

It means that no carbon dioxide will be available to enhance production in North Dakota oil fields, even though taps were built into the 200-mile pipeline from the plant north of Beulah to Saskatchewan for just that eventuality.

DGC spokesman Floyd Robb said the North Dakota petroleum industry was given notice that the remaining gas not already going to Canada would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

"We made it very clear to all the North Dakota companies," Robb said.

The company that made the bid is Apache Canada Ltd., which operates oil fields near EnCana, customer for all the carbon dioxide piped to Saskatchewan now.

Ron Ness, director of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, was not available for comment.

Fieldwork is under way at the DGC plant site north of Beulah now, in preparation for construction of a third gas compressor next summer. Delivery to Apache should start up around July.

The CO2 gas is a byproduct of coal gasification. It is produced when lignite is liquefied into a synthetic natural gas, like it is at DGC. Carbon dioxide is also released when coal is burned at power plants, but it can't yet be diverted from the waste stream at a reasonable cost.

EnCana is buying 95 million cubic feet daily of the gas and Apache will buy the remaining 25 million cubic feet available from the plant process.

"That's all of the economically recoverable carbon dioxide," Robb said.

Sales of CO2 have aided DGC's bottom line and, fluctuating with seasonal sales of anhydrous ammonia, make up the most profit in byproduct sales, Robb said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)