AER CCS Tenure Review Timeline: Monitoring Quarter Sections After a Pore Space Application

Your pore space tenure application is with the AER. The June 30 deadline passed, the submission package is in the queue, and now you wait. The AER's evaluation takes 60 to 90 days before a disposition decision is issued. During that window, your surface project planning cannot stop: well pad engineering, pipeline routing, surface lease negotiations, and environmental assessments all continue in parallel with the subsurface review.

The problem is that the quarter sections overlapping your proposed pore space tenure area are now in regulatory limbo. You cannot confirm subsurface rights until the AER publishes a disposition, but you need to track what else is happening on and around those parcels while you wait.

What Happens During the AER's 60 to 90 Day Review

After receiving a CCS tenure evaluation application, the AER assesses geological viability, checks for overlapping subsurface rights, and evaluates the applicant's technical capacity. The review covers:

1. Formation suitability: caprock integrity, formation pressure, and modeled plume migration against the DLS extent described in the application.
2. Rights conflicts: existing PNG dispositions, mineral rights, or competing pore space applications overlapping the proposed sections.
3. Operator qualification: technical and financial capacity to manage the storage project through its lifecycle.

The AER does not publish interim status updates. The next communication is the disposition decision itself.

How Disposition Decisions Are Published

When the AER completes its evaluation, it issues a pore space tenure disposition: either granted (with or without conditions) or refused. Granted dispositions define the approved storage area by its DLS extent, the geological formation, and the tenure term. The disposition is published in the Government of Alberta's tenure registry and appears in Township Canada's CCS Tenure Layer as the data refreshes.

A granted disposition does not mean you can start injecting. It confirms subsurface rights for the defined formation and DLS extent. Injection well licences, facility approvals, and environmental permits are separate regulatory steps that follow.

Monitoring Quarter-Section Adjacency During the Review Period

While your application is under review, other operators may be filing surface lease applications, well licences, or their own CCS proposals on adjacent or overlapping quarter sections. Tracking this activity matters for two reasons:

• Surface coordination: If a new pipeline or well licence appears on a quarter section within your proposed tenure boundary, you need to account for it in surface engineering before your project proceeds.
• Subsurface conflicts: A competing CCS application targeting the same formation in adjacent sections could affect your modeled plume extent or trigger an AER conflict review.

Toggle the CCS Tenure Layer, CCS Project Boundaries, and CCS Injection Wells from the Energy category in the map layers panel. These layers are free at all tiers. Licensed pore space tenure zones appear on the DLS survey grid with satellite imagery underneath. You can see which sections already carry a granted tenure, which are adjacent to your proposed area, and where new injection wells have been licensed.

For a project in the Fort Saskatchewan corridor with a proposed tenure block spanning 14 quarter sections across Sections 22, 27, 28, and 33 of Township 55, Range 20, W4M, the CCS Tenure Layer shows at a glance whether any neighbouring sections have received a pore space disposition since your application was filed.

GeoJSON Export for Ongoing AER Filings

Surface project planning continues during the review period. Pipeline routing, surface lease applications, and environmental baseline studies all require verified DLS descriptions and GPS coordinates. The batch converter on a Business plan handles the full location list in a single upload and exports as GeoJSON for QGIS or ArcGIS, or as KML for field verification. A description error caught during planning avoids a rejection notice after the disposition is granted.

After the Disposition Decision

Once the AER publishes a granted disposition, the approved tenure boundary appears in the CCS Tenure Layer. The focus shifts from monitoring to execution: filing injection well licence applications at specific LSDs within the approved area, submitting facility licence applications, and beginning the surface rights process for each quarter section in the approved tenure block.

The carbon sequestration industry guide covers how legal land descriptions flow through each stage of a CCS project. For the pre-submission workflow, see AER CCS Pore Space Tenure: How to Identify Quarter Sections in Licensed Tenure Zones.

FAQ

How long does the AER CCS tenure review take? The AER's evaluation typically takes 60 to 90 days from the submission deadline. The timeline depends on the complexity of the application and whether rights conflicts exist with other operators.

Does the AER provide status updates during the review? No. The AER does not publish interim updates on pending CCS tenure applications. The next communication after submission is the disposition decision.

Is the CCS Tenure Layer free? Yes. The CCS pore space rights, project boundaries, and injection wells layers are free at all paid tiers. No Energy Bundle is required. Toggle them from the Energy category in the map layers panel.

What does a granted disposition allow? A granted pore space tenure disposition confirms subsurface storage rights for the defined formation and DLS extent. It does not authorize injection. Injection well licences, facility approvals, and environmental permits are separate regulatory steps.