Legal Land Descriptions for Carbon Sequestration

Carbon capture and storage projects in Alberta require exact legal land descriptions at every stage — from pore space tenure applications filed with the Alberta Energy Regulator to injection well licenses, surface leases for compressor and dehydration facilities, and monitoring well placements. A transposed range number or wrong meridian puts the wrong formation on the wrong property, and AER reviewers will catch it.

AER is currently accepting Carbon Capture and Storage tenure evaluation applications through June 30, 2026, with Canada's 2025 federal budget doubling CCUS investment tax credits. The project pipeline is accelerating. Energy consultants filing applications need accurate legal land descriptions across multiple tenure types from day one.

Why CCS Projects Depend on DLS Legal Descriptions {#why-lld-matters}

Carbon sequestration projects have two distinct land components: the surface (where wells, pipelines, and facilities sit) and the subsurface (the pore space in the geological formation where CO₂ is injected and stored). Both require precise DLS legal descriptions.

The surface component works like any oil and gas project. Injection wells, monitoring wells, compression equipment, and pipelines each require well licenses and surface leases filed with the AER and the surface rights holder. Each licensed location is identified by its LSD for a wellhead, or by a sequence of quarter sections for linear infrastructure.

The subsurface component is unique to CCS. Alberta's Carbon Sequestration Tenure Regulations require a pore space tenure application identifying the subsurface geological formation where CO₂ will be stored. The application defines the storage reservoir by its DLS extent — typically a set of sections or townships covering the modeled plume migration area for the injection zone. A single injection well may store CO₂ across dozens of sections of subsurface pore space, so the pore space tenure area is usually far larger than the surface footprint.

Survey Systems Used in Carbon Sequestration Projects {#systems}

DLS Sections — Pore Space Tenure Areas

Pore space tenure applications define the storage formation by its DLS grid extent. For a project targeting a deep saline aquifer in central Alberta, the application might describe a storage area spanning multiple sections across two or three townships. AER requires section-level legal descriptions that match the geological formation boundaries — not arbitrary property lines — so the tenure application is tied directly to the DLS grid.

See Understanding the DLS System for how DLS sections and townships are numbered.

LSD — Injection and Monitoring Well Sites

Each injection well and monitoring well is licensed at the LSD level — the specific 40-acre parcel where the wellhead sits. A deep saline aquifer injection project in the Fort Saskatchewan–Heartland area might locate its primary injection well at SE-20-55-20-W4, with a pressure monitoring well at a neighboring LSD in the same section. Each requires a separate AER well license with the precise LSD description confirmed against survey corner data.

See Legal Subdivisions Explained.

Quarter Sections — Surface Infrastructure

Pipeline corridors, access roads, and power lines for CCS facilities cross multiple quarter sections, each requiring a right-of-way agreement with the surface rights holder. A pipeline routing from an industrial capture source to a remote injection site records each crossed quarter section in sequence — the same approach used in conventional O&G gathering systems and subject to the same AER surface rights filing requirements.

Real-World Scenario: CCUS Application Package {#scenario}

An energy consultant is preparing a CCS tenure evaluation application for a proposed CO₂ storage project targeting a carbonate formation in west-central Alberta. The application package requires legal descriptions across three tenure types:

1. Pore Space Tenure: Section-level DLS descriptions defining the subsurface storage area, covering the modeled CO₂ plume extent across 14 sections
2. Well Licenses (Injection and Monitoring): LSD-level descriptions for each proposed wellhead location
3. Surface Leases and Rights-of-Way: Quarter section identifications for the injection facility and pipeline corridor

The consultant has 40 locations in a spreadsheet — sections, LSDs, and quarter sections mixed together. Running the full list through the Business tier batch converter generates GPS coordinates for all 40 descriptions in a single upload, producing KML files for the submission maps and a CSV for the regulatory filing database. Errors in the raw list — a wrong meridian on two LSDs, a section number transposition — show up immediately when the GPS points don't land where expected on the satellite view.

For individual location checks during the AER review process, each description can be confirmed against the Township Canada converter before filing an amendment.

How Township Canada Handles CCS Workflows {#township-canada}

AER application mapping: Convert section and quarter section descriptions to GPS for regulatory submission maps. Export as KML for the project boundary exhibit or as GeoJSON for internal GIS review. The Business plan supports all export formats.

Batch processing: CCS projects involve dozens of legal descriptions across surface and subsurface tenure. The batch converter handles mixed lists of LSDs, quarter sections, and DLS sections in a single CSV upload — no need to process surface and pore space tenure separately.

Injection well site verification: Confirm each proposed injection LSD maps to the correct surface location before filing the well license. A description error caught at this stage avoids an AER amendment filing and potential project delays.

Overlap with O&G workflows: Most CCS projects are developed by the same teams managing existing producing well sites. The legal description workflow for CCS well licenses is identical to conventional O&G licensing. See Legal Land Descriptions for Oil and Gas for the standard AER well licensing workflow.

Try It with a CCS Project Location

Enter SE-20-55-20-W4 into the Township Canada converter to see a legal land description in the Fort Saskatchewan–Heartland area of Alberta — the region hosting several operating and proposed CCUS projects. The map shows the 40-acre parcel boundary with GPS coordinates for the site corners.

For broader carbon project work — including offset registration for emission reduction projects under TIER and the federal Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System — see Legal Land Descriptions for Carbon Credits.

For high-volume location processing on CCS application packages, the Business plan includes unlimited batch conversion, all export formats, and team access for multi-consultant project teams.