Big Oil’s Carbon Capture Conundrum

Many energy experts and environmentalists worry that the huge rush to fund CCS tech is a dangerous distraction. 

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, 20 April 2024 


Hard-to-abate industries, particularly oil and gas, are racing to increase their carbon capture capacity as they strive to decarbonise operations. Despite being some of the biggest carbon emitters, many oil and gas majors are optimistic they can dramatically reduce their emissions by using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. This is, realistically, one of the few ways that oil and gas companies can reduce while keeping their fossil fuel output high. However, energy experts and environmentalists are now worried that Big Oil is becoming overly reliant on CCS tech instead of striving for meaningful change towards a green transition.

CCS technology has been around for years but has so far not succeeded in capturing carbon dioxide at the rate required to decarbonise large-scale hard-to-abate operations. Companies and governments worldwide have pumped huge quantities of funding into CCS in recent years in a bid to develop the technology required to effectively capture and store huge amounts of CO2 from industrial and oil and gas operations. However, scientists are still uncertain about whether today’s technology can capture the massive quantity of carbon emissions that many oil majors are promising.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has deemed CCS technology as “critical” to achieving net-zero emissions around the globe. It is viewed as one of the few possible ways to decarbonise hard-to-abate industries that we continue to rely on until alternative production methods and materials are developed. The IEA also warned that it is not sustainable for oil and gas companies to mitigate major new fossil fuel projects simply by incorporating CCS tech into operations. Many oil majors have invested heavily in CCS tech to justify their ongoing exploration activities and huge oil and gas output, which is expected to continue for decades to come. But the IEA has repeatedly stated that this is at odds with a net-zero scenario by 2050.

CCS typically works by using chemical absorption to capture the CO2 emitted from a chimney at a facility. The emissions are then condensed into a liquid to be transported through a pipeline to be stored thousands of feet underground in depleted oil wells or geological formations. This process is anything but straightforward and rolling out CCS tech on a commercial scale is both complicated and expensive. According to the IEA, more than one billion metric tonnes of CO2 must be captured annually by 2030, which is over 20 times that captured in 2022. This figure rises to six billion tonnes in 2050, around 130 times more than in 2022.

Despite big promises, many companies are falling short of their carbon capture targets. To date, only five percent of announced CCS projects have reached a final investment decision, according to the IEA. There is still little evidence to suggest that CCS tech can be rolled out economically on a commercial scale.

Oil and gas companies have earmarked significant funds for CCS tech over the coming years, in the hope that will be able to continue pumping oil and gas for decades to come. Chevron expects to spend $10 billion on emissions-reducing technologies, while Exxon has pledged an investment of $20 billion. The projected total spending on CCS projects is around $241 billion globally by 2030. The U.S. and the U.K. are currently leading these efforts with investment pipelines of $85 billion and $45 billion, respectively, by 2030.

Many energy experts and environmentalists worry that the huge rush to fund CCS tech is a dangerous distraction. Oil and gas companies have been forced to accelerate their ESG efforts due to pressure from governments and international organisations, as well as high consumer expectations. However, most of these companies expect oil and gas production to continue to be their principal activity for the coming decades, meaning they need a quick way to decarbonise operations without cutting output. Without a proven track record, this could be a dangerous approach to decarbonising as, if CCS tech does not live up to expectations, it could have dire repercussions.

CCS technology is still extremely expensive, and it has a poor track record of working as effectively as anticipated. 

One 2022 study of CCS projects found that more were failing than succeeding, including Chevron’s Gorgon liquefied natural gas facility in Australia. This is the world’s biggest CCS project to date, at a cost of $3 billion, and it was found to be working at just a third of its expected capacity. At this rate, it will be impossible for companies that are relying on CCS tech to meet their climate targets in the coming years. Nevertheless, oil and gas companies worldwide continue to make bold claims about the potential for CCS tech, without sufficient evidence to back it up. The failure of CCS technologies in oil and gas operations could be catastrophic, leading to much higher-than-anticipated carbon emissions and contributing to a delay in the global green transition.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS 

 

Wärtsilä Offers Onboard Carbon Capture and Storage Feasibility Studies

With CCS-Ready scrubbers now being sold at pace, Wärtsilä’s studies across a range of vessel types come as next step in rapidly accelerating trajectory for CCS in shipping

Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment's engineers examine CCS performance in the company's test hall in Moss, Norway © Wärtsilä

PUBLISHED AUG 29, 2023 6:57 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

[By: Wärtsilä]

Technology group Wärtsilä is now offering carbon capture and storage (CCS) feasibility studies to shipowners and operators, in another milestone on its journey to research, develop and bring to market maritime CCS technologies. The studies have already been conducted on a range of vessel types including ro-ro and ro-pax vessels, a drill ship, a container vessel and a gas carrier.

The process takes four to six months of study and design work. Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment’s experts are involved in ship design at an early stage to conduct engineering work to understand how CCS can be smoothly integrated once the technology is launched to market.

Wärtsilä is conducting the feasibility studies across both newbuild and existing vessels. Retrofit CCS installations will be significantly smoothed by the presence of a scrubber onboard. Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment is already offering CCS-Ready scrubbers to the market, which are integrated onboard in a way that enables a CCS system to be added easily in the future once the technology is commercialised.

Once completed, the CCS feasibility study work enables Wärtsilä to provide customers with a fully rounded commercial offer that can be shared with shipyards to get an exact quote for installation. During the feasibility studies, Wärtsilä’s experts closely examine the existing naval architecture of the ship and work to understand how the power, space and exhaust demands of CCS can be accommodated onboard. Owners will receive a qualified analysis of the costs of CCS integration, and a clear list of considerations on how a potential retrofit would be conducted in the least intrusive way.

Conducting the studies today enables Wärtsilä to bring forward the early stages of CCS integration and, in doing so, lower the barrier to entry once the technology is commercialised in the near future. The studies also serve to educate customers on the upsides and particular considerations associated with installing CCS onboard their vessels. Finally, as the studies will run in parallel with the implementation of new environmental regulations for shipping, owners who conduct them today will be ‘ahead of the curve’ versus their peers.

Sigurd Jenssen, Director, Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment, said: “Launching these feasibility studies and being able to offer them to market is the exciting latest step in our process of bringing carbon capture and storage to market in shipping. It builds on the market-leading work we are conducting in our test hall in Moss, where our technology is already demonstrating our targeted 70% capture rate, and enables us to directly engage with customers to smooth the CCS adoption process in the near future.”

Jenssen continued: “By conducting these studies today, we are already building a considerable track record and understanding of how this technology will work across multiple vessel types. It builds on the considerable uptake we have already seen for our CCS-Ready scrubbers, which show that the industry is not only exploring CCS as a speculative technology, but is actively investing in its foundations as a decarbonisation solution. We look forward to conducting more of these studies in the coming months as we work to bring our CCS system to market.”

When a customer opts for a Wärtsilä CCS-Ready scrubber, the company takes measures during the scrubber installation process to ensure adequate space for the future installation of CCS system. CCS-Ready scrubbers are also designed to enable smooth integration with a Particulate Matter filter.

Wärtsilä Exhaust Treatment is the market-leading marine exhaust gas cleaning system manufacturer, with a range of lifecycle solutions. Wärtsilä offers integrated compliant solutions for all types of ships, and in open loop, closed loop or hybrid configurations. Wärtsilä’s scrubbers are built with a modular approach to future technology development, creating a platform for the abatement of other emissions from shipping beyond sulphur.

Denmark Allocates $3.9B to Carbon Capture/Storage as it Accelerates Timing

With Avedore as a backdrop, Denmark outlined a comprehensive approach to carbon capture and storage advancing the deadline to 2029 (Orsted file photo)

PUBLISHED AUG 21, 2023 6:21 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Denmark announced a comprehensive plan for carbon capture and storage that includes significant government support as the country also accelerates its timeline while saying that CO2 capture and storage is one of several critical tools to achieve climate goals in Denmark, Europe, and the rest of the world. The announcement of the new plan comes just a week after Denmark postponed its second tender for offshore CO2 storage saying the government needed to finalize a comprehensive plan that resolved government participation in the industry.

“We are moving the requirement for full capture from 2030 to 2029 so that we get more CO2 from the air and into the underground faster,” said says Climate, Energy and Supply Minister Lars Aagaard during a briefing about the new plan at Avedøreværket, a power station just south of Copenhagen. “The plan must also ensure a clearer framework for the burgeoning industry and in this way bring the Danish CCS industry up in scale and down in price. It may well be that it's geeky, but it's in the geekery that things happen.”

The plan was presented as a comprehensive approach to with the government stressing that by pooling resources and creating clear framework conditions for CO2 capture and storage it was providing clarity to Danish industry. The energy minister was joined by Business Minister Morten Bødskov and Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen in presenting the new plan.

Instead of smaller tenders, the government plans to launch two large, comprehensive tenders, one in 2024 and a second in 2025. They plan to invest approximately $3.9 billion, with approximately $1.5 billion for the 2024 tender and a further nearly $2.4 billion in 2025 allocated over a 15-year period to support the programs. The goal for 2024 is to set up plans for 0.9 million tons of carbon capture and storage and a further 1.4 million tons in the 2025 tender.  Going forward the government will continue to hold 20 percent state ownership, which is the model that was used for the first three licenses and the key point that the ministry said needed to be resolved before the next offshore tender.

While saying as a country Denmark must capture at least 3.2 million tons of CO2 annually by 2030, the new plan moves forward by one year the requirement for the programs to 2029. They said the possibility is also provided to start the large-scale capture and storage efforts by 2028.

The plan also ensures clear framework conditions for the industry regarding ownership and regulation for the transport of CO2 via pipes. Among other things, the government said it will expand the existing rules for the transport of CO2 to include all forms of CO2 transport, which is particularly important for the transport of CO2 for use in PtX facilities and for CO2 that must be shipped via ports for offshore storage.

The goal in addition to providing greater clarity was to increase the size and scope so that more companies can bid and participate in the efforts.

Denmark earlier this year awarded the first exploration licenses for offshore carbon storage after providing a provisional license for the testing and demonstration of the world’s first offshore storage operation. In addition, they awarded the first licenses for industrial plants to establish capture initiatives first centered on one of Ørsted’s plants but designed to also create the infrastructure for other industrial emitters to participate. 

Carbon Capture Is Coming Under Fire For Underperforming

Editor OilPrice.com
Thu, February 9, 2023

There has been a lot of hype around carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the last few years. Many energy companies and governments have touted CCS as the potential savior of oil and gas in a decarbonized world. As political powers around the globe race to decarbonize their economies in the transition away from fossil fuels to green alternatives, CCS has been seen as a way of bridging the gap in the transition, as renewable energy operations continue to expand. CCS technologies are being incorporated into oil and gas projects to help reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, allowing energy firms to continue producing fossil fuels while the global demand remains high. While many see this as a necessary move to maintain energy security, others believe CCS is just another form of greenwashing, helping to delay the inevitable shift to real green.

Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have highlighted the use of CCS technology in oil and gas projects as important for emissions reduction, a necessary stage in the transition to clean energy. It is seen as an easy way to reduce emissions while still providing the energy needed to meet the global demand before enough renewable energy projects are in operation to supply this energy. However, as the public is being told that CCS will help decarbonize operations, few questions are being asked about the scale of this technology and its ability to remove carbon effectively.

National decarbonization aims and carbon taxes have put pressure on oil and gas firms to make a change, with many quickly investing in CCS technology to ensure they can keep running their fossil fuel operations. But now experts are worried that people are seeing CCS as a silver bullet to climate change, with its use for decarbonization having been highly exaggerated. A 2022 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) revealed that CCS projects were underperforming, with significant challenges in terms of the technology and regulatory framework. The analysis of several projects showed that approximately 90 percent of the proposed CCS capacity in the power sector has not been realized, and many projects fail to achieve their anticipated maximum capture rates.

Bruce Robertson, an author of the report, stated “Many international bodies and national governments are relying on carbon capture in the fossil fuel sector to get to net zero, and it simply won’t work.” He added, “Although it might have a role to play in hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, fertilisers and steel, overall results indicate a financial, technical and emissions-reduction framework that continues to overstate and underperform.”

In 2019, there were 59 CCS plants in operation worldwide, capable of removing over 40 million tonnes of CO2 on an annual basis. This was just a fraction of the carbon that was being released each year, which amounted to around 43 billion tonnes, or 1,000 times more. In addition, the high cost of CCS technology has long deterred many companies from using the decarbonization method more widely.

CCS has existed since the 1970s, although it was previously called enhanced oil recovery. But seeing the potential for CCS to be viewed as a mechanism for climate change action, it was rebranded by energy firms as ‘carbon capture utilization and storage’. Yet, in 2022, around 70 percent of CCS projects used captured CO2 to support the production of more oil and gas.

In Port Isabel, Texas, climate activists are now campaigning against a $10 billion project to export liquefied natural gas, Rio Grande LNG. The developer, NextDecade, has labeled the plant the “greenest LNG project in the world”, thanks to the incorporation of CCS technology into operations. But environmentalists say that calling the project ‘clean’ is an outright lie and a clear case of greenwashing. NextDecade plans to construct one of the biggest CCS systems in North America, to remove 5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, reducing its emissions from gas cooling by around 90 percent. However, gas cooling only accounts for between 6% and 7% of the plant’s emissions, meaning that a large quantity of waste CO2 is not being accounted for.

And despite high hopes for CCS in the transition to green, at least in the mid-term, environmentalists worldwide are now worried that as Big Oil declines, another giant industry – that continues to contribute to climate change – will emerge. One media outlet said that “Big Oil has given way to Big Suck.” And of course, there is wide public support for a technology that’s being viewed as a major decarboniser that helps boost the world’s energy security. As CCS continues to be used to support the provision of lower-carbon fossil fuels, which are still in high demand, it is unlikely that governments will demonize its use. However, it should be viewed as a temporary solution rather than a long-term fix in the transition to green, to avoid the longevity of oil and gas operations beyond their need.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Documents, Whistleblowers, and Public Comments Are Clear: Oil Companies Know Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution

The fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture bamboozle, explained.

By Amy Westervelt

August 1, 2024

Source: Drilled


Themeisle - CopenHill Sky Slope Chimney Smoking. Flickr.



This spring, Democrats wrapped up a nearly three-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate disinformation, and asked the Department of Justice to pick up where they left off. In House and Senate Democrats’ final report and hearing, investigators concluded that major oil companies had not only misled the public on climate change for decades, but also were continuing to misinform them about the industry’s preferred climate “solutions”— particularly biofuels and carbon capture.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who spearheaded the investigation, also accused oil companies of “obstructing” it, submitting few documents, and redacting much of what they did send. One ExxonMobil employee who spoke with Drilled and Vox under condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation described what the company sent as “a truly random assortment of unimportant documents.”

But there was at least one notable exception: a report detailing the company’s projections for the future of carbon capture technology.

If you’ve read a New York Times newsletter recently, or seen this ad on Politico’s website or heard it on one of its podcasts, or listened to the Planet Money podcast, you may have noticed the industry’s relentlessly positive marketing of carbon capture, which aims to collect and store CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial and fossil fuel extraction facilities, so they don’t add to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said carbon capture might be necessary to reduce the emissions of certain “hard to abate” sectors like steel, concrete, and some chemical manufacturing, but noted that in the best-case scenario, with carbon capture technology working flawlessly and deployed at large scale, it could only account for a little over 2 percent of global carbon emissions reductions by 2030.

That hasn’t stopped major oil companies from claiming that carbon capture and storage “will be essential for helping society achieve net-zero emissions,” that they are delivering “carbon capture for American industry,” working on reducing emissions in their own businesses (also referred to as “carbon intensity”), and delivering “heavy industry with low emissions.” But internal documents obtained during the federal investigation, as well as information that industry whistleblowers shared with Drilled and Vox, reveal an industry that is decidedly more realistic about the emissions-reduction potential of carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, than it presents publicly.
Companies touted the potential of CCS publicly, as they downplayed the technology internally.

In 2018, the oil and gas company Shell released an updated energy scenario, a forecast that served as a standard for the rest of the oil industry, in which it laid out what the Washington Post called a “radical” new approach on climate. Beginning in 1965, Shell pioneered the now-common practice of “scenario planning” for oil companies: mapping out what the industry and the world are likely to look like in the future. Other oil companies will still often compare their scenarios to Shell’s.

Exxon’s internal 2018 scenario comparison was included in the most recent batch of documents handed over to Senate and House investigators. In it, ExxonMobil compared its future projections with Shell’s rosiest forecast for the energy transition. Buried in a chart in that projection is ExxonMobil’s belief at the time about the global potential for CCS.

Even without the massive stamp (which marks this page as part of the set of documents obtained by Congressional subpoena), these graphs would be difficult to read. The one on the left compares the projected number of CCS units in Shell’s “Sky” scenario versus the number projected by ExxonMobil, while the graph on the right compares the two companies’ forecasts for future CO2 emissions.

But squinting at the numbers reveals some shocking takeaways about Exxon’s confidence in CCS. While Shell’s optimistic projection envisions 10,000 large-scale CCS facilities operational by 2070, with more than 2500 facilities by 2050, Exxon predicts somewhere between 250 and 500 facilities by 2050.

Exxon’s 2018 projections align with what critics of CCS have been saying for years. In its fact sheet on CCS, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a nonprofit, non-partisan think tank that produces market-based research on the energy transition, states: “It’s worth noting that not one single CCS project has ever reached its target CO2 capture rate.”

Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson said that because it also requires energy and materials to function, CCS attached to a fossil-fueled power plant is worse for the climate than replacing fossil energy with renewables.

“They actually increase carbon dioxide emissions by doing this, in addition to increasing air pollution,” he said, referencing a study he conducted in 2019 that does the math on the lifecycle CO2 emissions of various carbon capture scenarios. Even when CCS is powered by wind, Jacobson said it’s not worth doing, from a climate perspective. “If you just used wind to replace coal in the first place, you’d get a higher reduction in CO2 emissions,” he said.

And oil giants themselves have been hedging on the technology for years, despite marketing its potential. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed requiring that power plants install CCS in its rules for power plants, for example, both fossil fuel companies and utilities expressed far less faith in the technology in their public comments on the rule than they have in their ads about carbon capture. In Exxon’s public comment, the company encouraged the agency to reduce its requirements around capture efficiency from 95 percent to 75 percent, which is more in line with the actual performance of existing CCS projects.

The EPA rule “was going to mandate either using CCS on a power plant in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to take some action that would be equivalent to adding CCS, and the response from industry was ‘hey the tech is really not proven,’” David Schlissel, director of resource planning analysis for IEEFA, said. “Many, many comments from oil companies and utilities, in response to both the initial EPA rule and the current one, were saying this tech really doesn’t work.” Even though the agency weakened its requirements around CCS, some of those same entities, alongside 25 attorneys general who are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, have now asked the Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay on the power plant rules, again arguing that the technology isn’t ready for prime time.

Exxon’s low internal projections for CCS back in 2018 map to the company’s own challenges with the technology. To date, the only “successful” carbon capture project Exxon claims is its LaBarge Shute Creek gas facility in Wyoming. The Shute Creek facility is often referenced by the industry in general as a large and long-standing CCS project. On paper, it’s responsible for around 40 percent of the total carbon emissions ever captured in the world. But the details tell a more complicated story.

According to Exxon’s own disclosures and an analysis conducted by IEEFA in 2022, only around 3 percent of the carbon captured in LaBarge (roughly 6 million tonnes) has been permanently sequestered underground. Of the rest of the 240 million tonnes of carbon emitted over the facility’s first 35 years in operation, half has been sold to various oilfield operators for enhanced oil recovery— a process by which oil companies inject carbon underground to get more oil out. Approximately 120 million tonnes, meanwhile, has been vented into the atmosphere.

When asked to comment for this story about its 2018 scenario plan and overall record on CCS, ExxonMobil sent the following statement by email: “False narratives that downplay our CCS efforts deliberately fail to recognize the strides we’re making in our Low Carbon Solutions business. Referencing one possible scenario from over six years ago does not represent our business outlook. We continuously evaluate our business plan based on market conditions.”

Exxon pointed to its public-facing 2023 Global Outlook as its most current thinking on the potential of carbon capture. That report states: “Carbon capture is a proven and safe technology that reduces emissions from manufacturing and power generation.”

But in commenting on its scenario plan, Exxon’s spokesperson focused on “market conditions” and its shifting “business outlook,” not the technology itself. The business outlook and market conditions for CCS have changed because of the increased tax credit for CCS that oil majors, including Exxon, lobbied for—and, according to the documents subpoenaed by federal investigators, heavily influenced. Senator Joe Manchin introduced these increases in 2021 as part of the negotiations that saw the Biden Administration’s proposed “Build Back Better” legislation morph into the Inflation Reduction Act. The final IRA made major changes to the 45Q tax credit, which started out in 2008 paying $10 for every metric ton of carbon sequestered, then increased to $50 per metric ton in 2018; after the IRA, it now pays up to $85 per metric ton and up to $60 for carbon stored and used for enhanced oil recovery, or EOR. Suddenly, EOR, a technique for getting more oil out of the ground, is a “climate solution” called CCS and CCS is profitable.

What’s more, there’s little to no oversight in the legislation for companies getting taxpayer money for doing CCS. The IRA nominally requires companies to verify their claims to the credit, but aside from some specific requirements to ensure condensed CO2 doesn’t wind up in groundwater, the EPA is not verifying how much carbon is actually sequestered by these projects.

“There is no cap on 45Q and stored emissions are entirely self-reported,” Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science & Environmental Health Network, said.

When asked about verification of carbon stored under the 45Q tax credit, the EPA told Drilled and Vox that it “does not implement the Section 45Q tax credit program and is not privy to taxpayer data,” and that questions about how tax claims are verified should be directed to the IRS. The IRS confirmed that it ensures companies claiming the credit have filed paperwork outlining their claims, including a lifecycle analysis, but that it does not have the scientific or technical expertise to verify that the amount of carbon claimed is actually being permanently sequestered.

“What the IPCC actually said in its mitigation report was that carbon capture might be necessary for hard-to-abate industries, but that it’s one of the most expensive options and it only equates to small emissions reductions,” said Paul Blackburn, an environmental lawyer and advisor to the Bold Alliance, a nonprofit network of frontline communities focused on protecting land and water. “So we’re doing the most expensive, least applicable thing first rather than cheapest easiest things first at great expense to taxpayers and with no analysis of net climate benefit.”


“We’re doing the most expensive, least applicable thing first rather than cheapest easiest things first at great expense to taxpayers and with no analysis of net climate benefit.” — Paul Blackburn, environmental lawyer and advisor to the Bold Alliance
How oil giants rushed to market CCS

Even before the creation of a remarkably generous tax credit, and despite their own internal projections or challenges with the technology, oil majors painted a rosy picture of CCS starting in the later half of the 2010s. Emails obtained by federal investigators show that Shell pulled together an “Alliance of Champions” to promote CCS, while BP worked with the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative to develop what it called “CCS enabling narratives.” Exxon, meanwhile, began promoting itself as a leader in carbon capture.

In the last five years, Exxon produced multiple pro-CCS brochures and ads, comparing the carbon capture potential at industrial plants to the carbon sequestration of actual plants and trees. An NPR sponsorship from 2018, for example, describes ExxonMobil as “the company that believes that carbon capture technologies are critical for lowering global CO2 emissions.”

The oil major even worked on a series of kids’ videos touting CCS. In one subpoenaed email from 2019, Exxon executives asked the creative team working on the kids’ series to steer away from the idea that carbon is bad or that carbon capture is difficult. “De-emphasize concept that catching carbon is difficult or hard,” the feedback reads.


Yet that is precisely the company’s experience with CCS, according to several current and former Exxon staffers who agreed to speak with Drilled and Vox on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Some of them were involved in the early days of researching CCS as a potential climate solution at Exxon, which they said only began in earnest in 2018, the same year that the 45Q tax credit first increased.

The company’s experience before then, the sources said, was entirely focused on enhanced oil recovery — the process of injecting CO2 into a separate well to increase enough pressure in a reservoir to push additional oil out of a production well. While enhanced oil recovery, or EOR, does sequester carbon — some of it stays underground after it’s been injected — experts say the process could release 40 percent of the CO2 back into the air, and the oil it helps to get out of the ground also generates CO2 emissions when it’s burned.

Exxon is not the only one that embraced EOR for years before repositioning it as a climate solution. The industry has known for decades that compressed carbon works really well to vacuum up any remaining oil from porous rock, but it’s expensive to store and transport carbon. The industry’s embrace of natural gas helped drive down costs a bit: gas often comes out of the ground bringing quite a bit of CO2 with it. That CO2 needs to be stripped out to make natural gas, a process called“gas sweetening,” leaving companies with excess CO2.

Still, the process of storing and transporting it remained expensive, so it didn’t always make financial sense to do EOR. Now, with investor-owned oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP, and Shell hurtling toward an inevitable decline in production rates — an inflection point referred to as “peak oil” — they need EOR more than ever. By rebranding it as a climate solution and tying it to a tax credit, they’ve not just made the process cheaper, they’ve created a new revenue stream — called Low Carbon Solutions at Exxon and Shell, Gas & Low Carbon Energy at BP, and Lower Carbon at Chevron.

The 45Q tax credit revenue will also make it feasible for these new business units to supply carbon capture where it might genuinely be needed, on facilities with hard-to-abate emissions, like concrete, steel, and ammonia plants. But the vast majority of carbon that US taxpayers are paying oil companies to capture will either be going toward generating more oil, or would have greater emissions reductions benefits had the companies opted not to drill for gas in the first place.
Clouded in Carbon Complexity

According to the International Energy Agency, using “naturally occurring” carbon—the CO2 that comes up with methane as part of natural gas, for example—in EOR, as opposed to “anthropogenic CO2,” the emissions captured from a facility like a power plant or factory, “clearly provides no benefit in terms of emissions intensity.” Absent the drilling in the first place, there would be no CO2 or methane emissions in those cases.

In the United States, more than 70 percent of the CO2 injected underground as part of the EOR process is from natural sources. That’s true of the Exxon’s showcase facility—the Shute Creek facility in LaBarge, Wyoming—as well.The CO2 source there is the gas that’s being drilled. ExxonMobil calls this “anthropogenic CO2,” but when pressed, a spokesperson told Drilled it’s generated by the separation process. In other words, absent the gas drilling, there would be no CO2 to capture at the site in the first place.

Despite that, when ExxonMobil talks about itself in PR materials as the “global leader” in CCS, pointing to its “more than 30 years of CCS experience,” and the fact that it has captured more CO2 than any other company in the world, it is referring to LaBarge, which has been in operation since 1986.

According to a case study from MIT, where Exxon has long funded research on CCS and other industry-friendly “climate solutions,” from 1986 to 2008, LaBarge reinjected about 400,000 tonnes of CO2 a year back into the reservoir from which it came, and vented 180 million cubic feet of CO2 per day from the facility’s smokestacks. In 2008, it was ordered by the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to reduce its vented CO2 emissions, which it did by building out a carbon capture system that redirected CO2 into pipelines for enhanced oil recovery.

In 2022, a study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that LaBarge was selling half of its captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery and venting the rest. This means that millions of tonnes of carbon the company claimed to have “captured” were ultimately emitted into the atmosphere.

Climate scientists say CCS connected to fossil fuel use or production delivers little benefit when it comes to tackling climate change, period.

“It doesn’t make sense to use CCS to prolong our use of fossil fuels, especially to produce electricity,” David Ho, professor at University of Hawaii and senior researcher at Columbia University, said. “The argument in favor of enhanced oil recovery is often that if they weren’t using this captured CO2 they’d be using some other CO2. But I don’t think you can call anything where you’re getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution.”

Yet, so far, oil majors have struggled to deploy CCS technology in any other capacity. “When we talk about the failure of CCS, we generally talk about capturing not storage, but when you look at capacity and how much has actually been sequestered, it’s very little,” Ho said.

When CO2 is actually sequestered underground, there’s no guarantee it stays there. “CO2 has a way of moving through the air, of leaking through pipelines and because we have no cradle to grave tracking, we have no way of actually knowing how much is leaking, how much is really being collected, how much is hitting the wellhead, and how much is really staying underground,” Raffensperger said.

That’s not just concerning from a climate perspective, but from a public health perspective as well. Raffensperger noted that the pipelines built to transport condensed carbon from oil fields to storage facilities, or to other oil fields for EOR, are surrounded by “kill zones.”

“These are not your grandmother’s pipelines,” Raffensperger said. “They could be lethal. We talk about the kill zone or a fatality zone around a CO2 pipeline. We don’t talk about that with oil and gas pipelines. These are uniquely dangerous and underregulated.”Following a 2020 CO2 leak and explosion in Satartia, Mississippi that abruptly stopped cars on roadways, caused widespread dizziness and nausea, and sent several residents to the hospital, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration began looking into rules for CO2 pipelines. They were set to finalize that rule this summer, pending review by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but that deadline has been extended to fall 2024. The lack of finalized safety regulations has not stopped the permitting of CO2 pipelines, though. The Summit pipeline, a massive project that would carry carbon across five states, just got the go ahead in June 2024 for the first step of its construction process in Iowa: seizing land through eminent domain to make way for the pipeline.
Carbon capture and storage is a fantasy—and taxpayers are footing the bill.

According to current and former Exxon employees, the company’s efforts to explore the “S” part of the CCS equation—storage, or sequestration—only began when it pulled together a team of technical experts to look for weaknesses in a 2018 U.S. Geological Survey assessment that showed enormous potential for CCS.

“They thought the USGS was overly optimistic [about the potential of CCS] and they wanted us to basically bring industry technical expertise in to tell them their projections were overblown,” one Exxon staffer said. The team brought together to study CCS was then tasked with running an experiment to see if it was even possible to permanently store captured carbon. When the study showed that it was indeed possible, current and former Exxon staffers told Drilled and Vox the company’s executives were “surprised.”

To truly sell CCS as a climate solution, Exxon had to show that storage at scale was feasible. Former employees told us that at the end of the last decade, executives came up with a prioritized list of the company’s export and import terminals and refineries where it might be relatively easy to attach CCS. As of this year, none of those projects have been built (though the company did publicly announce in late 2023 that it was working on a fuel-cell-powered carbon capture and hydrogen project at its Rotterdam refinery, one of the options on that list).

While it hasn’t managed to build commercial scale carbon storage itself, Exxon did acquire enhanced oil recovery company Denbury in 2023, which brought 1300 miles of CO2 pipelines and 15 onshore carbon storage sites under Exxon’s control. Again, this system is focused on enhanced oil recovery.

“CCS is a proven and safe technology that experts agree is pivotal to achieving net zero,” an ExxonMobil spokesperson said in response to a request for comment for this story. “We’re making progress in our Low Carbon Solutions business, with current plans to capture and permanently store more CO2 than any other company.”

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, has called the industry’s plan to offset its emissions with carbon capture “fantasy.”

But the U.S. government is all in on that fantasy now.

“[The carbon capture tax credit] 45Q is not based on net climate benefit or net CO2 reductions, it’s based on gross CO2 capture,” Blackburn said. “Why would you think making carbon a commodity would reduce CO2 emissions? It’s like the opposite of carbon tax, we’re actually paying them to produce more of it.”

Ugochi Oluigbo-Anyaka, Royce Kurmelovs, and Molly Taft also contributed reporting to this story.

‘A shocking failure’: Chevron criticised for missing carbon capture target at WA gas project


The Western Australian environment minister is seeking an explanation after the energy company fell short of its five-year target

The Chevron gas project under construction on Barrow Island off Western Australia in 2016. Chevron Australia is facing criticism for missing its five-year carbon capture and storage target. Photograph: Ray Strange/AAP

Adam Morton 

Climate and environment editor

THE GUARDIAN
Mon 19 Jul 2021 

The energy giant Chevron has conceded its self-described world’s biggest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project has failed to meet a five-year target for burying carbon dioxide under an island off Western Australia.

Climate campaigners believe the company should be heavily fined after it acknowledged on Monday that it had not met a requirement to capture and inject underground at least 80% of emissions from a gas reservoir over the first five years of the Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) development

The Western Australian environment minister, Amber-Jade Sanderson, said through a spokesperson that she had called Chevron in for a meeting “to seek an explanation of how the company intends to address the issue”.

An analysis last year suggested Chevron could face a bill of more than A$100m if required to offset all emissions that breached its approval requirements.

Chevron Australia, which operates the Gorgon facility on behalf of partners including Shell and ExxonMobil, issued a statement saying it was “poised to reach a significant milestone” of injecting 5m tonnes of greenhouse gas more than 2km beneath Barrow Island since sequestration belatedly began in August 2019.


Gas and coal companies among recipients of $50m in Coalition grants from carbon capture fund

The company’s Australian boss Mark Hatfield said this showed the company was “deploying technology, innovation and skills to deliver cleaner energy and reduce our carbon footprint”.

“The road hasn’t always been smooth, but the challenges we’ve faced and overcome make it easier for those who aspire to reduce their emissions through CCS,” he said.

Hatfield said the company would work with the WA regulator on how to “make up the shortfall”, which he did not quantify. Chevron Australia would release a report on the issue later this year, he said.

Ian Porter, a former oil and gas industry executive who is chair of the advocacy group Sustainable Energy Now WA, said the report was likely to find the project had captured only 30% of what it was supposed to.

He said the report would be a “major test case for CCS technology”, which the Morrison government is backing as one of five priorities under what it calls a “technology, not taxes” approach to emissions reduction.

“It’s a shocking failure of one of the world’s largest engineering projects,” Porter said.

“Chevron needs to face significant fines and be forced to offset the more than six million tonnes of unauthorised legacy carbon dioxide releases.

“I sincerely hope CCS does work one day. Ultimately, we need it. But until that time, it is reckless and disingenuous for the industry to keep pretending that it can expand operations and reach net zero.”


Western Australia LNG plant faces calls to shut down until faulty carbon capture system is fixed

Angus Taylor, the federal energy and emissions reduction minister, last year referred to Gorgon as an example of CCS “already working”, describing it as “the biggest project in the world”.

The $3bn development, which received $60m in federal funding, has had a troubled history. It was initially delayed for more than three years due to technical setbacks and the CCS system stopped working properly earlier this year following a problem with a pressure management system.

Under its terms of approval, the development was expected to capture and bury about 4m tonnes a year to meet a target of sequestering 80% of reservoir gas across a rolling five year period.

An aerial view of terminal tanks at the northern end of Barrow Island, the site of Chevron’s gas project. Photograph: Bill Hatto/AAP

The company was not required to capture emissions released during LNG processing. It means a fully successful CCS facility would reduce total emissions from Gorgon by only about 40%.

Despite Chevron missing its target, the oil and gas industry lobby group said the company’s announcement showed the industry was “continuing to walk the walk when it comes to reducing emissions”.

Andrew McConville, the chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, said: “Chevron’s announcement is on top of all the work our industry is already doing to combat climate change.”

New LNG developments have led to a significant increase in national industrial emissions over the past decade. They have limited the benefits of reduced carbon pollution from Australia’s electricity generation thanks to more solar and wind energy.

Official data shows the Gorgon facility has twice breached its initial emissions limit under the safeguard mechanism, a federal government policy that was promised to cap industrial carbon pollution but has allowed continued increases.

When the scheme started in 2016-17, Gorgon’s annual emissions limit – known as a baseline – was 8.34m tonnes of CO2.

It released 9.02m tonnes in 2017-18 and 8.97m tonnes in 2018-19, the most recent year for which data is available. Rather than be penalised for the breaches, it was allowed to set a new baseline calculated across a three-year period.

Separate official data from the Clean Energy Regulator shows Chevron was responsible for more than 10.2m tonnes of CO2 in 2019-20, making it Australia’s eighth-biggest emitter.

 

Chevron’s Carbon Capture Struggle Shows Big Oil’s Climate Hurdle

Bloomberg

July 19, 2021

By Stephen Stapczynski (Bloomberg) —

The world’s biggest project to capture and store carbon dioxide isn’t working like it should, highlighting the challenges oil companies face in tackling their greenhouse gas emissions.

Chevron Corp.’s system at the $54 billion Gorgon liquefied natural gas export plant in Australia missed a local government target to inject captured carbon dioxide underground, the San Ramon, California-based company said Monday. That’s a setback for energy companies globally that have staked their net-zero futures on the technology, which has shown limited success to date.

While Chevron has sequestered almost 5 million tons of carbon dioxide since the capture project began in August 2019, that’s fallen short of a target to capture an average 80% of emissions in the first five years of the LNG facility’s operation.

“Chevron is working with the Western Australia regulator on making up the shortfall,” the company’s Australia Managing Director Mark Hatfield said in a statement.

The company has buried only 30% of about 15 million tons of CO2 generated since Gorgon began producing gas in March 2016, oil industry publication Boiling Cold reported Friday.

Oil and natural gas producers are counting on carbon capture, or CCS, to succeed as they come under greater scrutiny from investors and governments to lower emissions. To limit global warming, about 10,000 large CCS facilities need to be built over the next five decades, according to Royal Dutch Shell Plc. There were fewer than 50 in operation last year.

Shell and ExxonMobil Corp. each hold 25% of Gorgon LNG, while Chevron has just over 47%.

Gorgon’s multibillion-dollar CCS project has been beset with technical issues, including problems with its pressure management system, according to Boiling Cold.

Instead of venting the CO2 into the atmosphere, which is the industry norm, Chevron’s plant is designed to manage pollution that’s produced from the offshore fields that feed the LNG facility. As the gas is sent to be liquefied for export, the CO2 is pumped into a reservoir more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) underground.

Western Australia’s government insisted on the CCS facility as a condition for approving Gorgon, which is expected to run for four decades. The state’s regulator has requested details on why Chevron missed its target, and Western Australia’s Environment Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson is seeking a meeting with the company.

“Gorgon’s failure poses a major problem for any oil and gas company betting on CCS to meet net zero,” said Ian Porter, the chairperson of Sustainable Energy Now, WA. “CCS simply does not work at the scale and at the price needed.”

–With assistance from James Thornhill.

© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Blow for CCS: Chevron's giant carbon capture project falling short of targets

Operator fails to meet requirements under Gorgon's project approvals to sequester at least 80% of CO2 emissions in first five years of operation


Missing CCS targets: Chevron's Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia Photo: CHEVRON

US supermajor Chevron has failed to meet its emission reduction targets at its Gorgon liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia after a troubled start to the carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility.

Chevron confirmed on Monday that it was not going to meet its promised injection rates, with the project only capturing a fraction of the carbon dioxide expected during its first five years of operation.

Under the terms of Gorgon’s project approval, Chevron is required to sequester at least 80% of the CO2 emissions released from the reservoirs that feed the Gorgon LNG plant over a five-year period.

While the first train at Gorgon came online in 2016, issues with the CCS facility did not see it start up until 2019 and continued issues have prevented the facility from operating reliably.

The facility is designed to capture 4 million tonnes per annum of CO2, however, Chevron confirmed Monday that only 5 million tonnes of CO2 had been injected since the August 2019 start-up.
'Shocking failure' for CCS

Renewable energy thinktank, Sustainable Energy Now, believes Chevron's initial five-year report will find Gorgon’s CCS facility only managed to capture 30% of the CO2 it promised.


Emission increase: Chevron faces more Gorgon CCS issuesRead more

“It’s a shocking failure of one of the world’s largest engineering projects. But, given the lack of rigour and testing around the technology that was used, I cannot say it is unexpected,” chairperson of Sustainable Energy Now, WA, Ian Porter said.

“Chevron needs to face significant fines and be forced to offset the more than 6 million tonnes of unauthorised legacy carbon dioxide releases. Gorgon’s failure poses a major problem for any oil and gas company betting on CCS to meet net zero.”

Porter added that he believed oil and gas companies were being “overly optimistic” in their assumptions for the potential success of CCS in order to argue for the expansion of oil and gas extraction.

“CCS simply does not work at the scale and at the price needed to undo the damage that will be created by these projects,” he claimed.

“I sincerely hope CCS does work one day. Ultimately, we need it. But until that time, it is reckless and disingenuous for the industry to keep pretending that it can expand operations and reach net zero.”


Gas producers work to earn their role in energy transitionRead more

Sharing lessons learned

Chevron Australia managing director Mark Hatfield admitted Gorgon had not met its CO2 injection requirements, adding the company was working with the West Australian regulator on making up the shortfall, with details on how the shortfall will be met to be released later this year.

“Like any pioneering endeavour, it takes time to optimise a new system to ensure it performs reliably over 40-plus years of operation. The road hasn’t always been smooth, but the challenges we’ve faced — and overcome — make it easier for those who aspire to reduce their emissions through CCS,” he added.

“We’re committed to sharing the lessons we’ve learned with state and federal governments, research institutes and other energy producers to assist the deployment of CCS in Australia.

“CCS is a proven technology which experts agree is critical to achieving a lower carbon future while ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy for billions around the world who rely on it.”


Hydrogen and CCS take centre stage in Australia's shift to net zeroRead more

While it may have fallen short of its target, Chevron claims the 5 million tonnes captured since the facility’s 2019 start-up represents the largest volume of injection achieved over the same time period by any CCS system globally, with comparable specifications.

"This significant milestone shows how we’re deploying technology, innovation and skills to deliver cleaner energy and reduce our carbon footprint,” Hafield stated.

“The Gorgon carbon capture and storage system is the biggest CCS system designed to capture carbon emissions and is demonstrating Australia’s world-leading capability in the area.”



Industry group the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) chose not to focus on the project missing its emission reduction requirements, instead highlighting the total the project had been able to successfully sequester.

“Our industry is walking the walk when it comes to reducing emissions. Injecting 5 million tonnes of CO2e is equivalent to taking more than 1.6 million passenger vehicles off Australia’s roads for a year,” APPEA chief executive Andrew McConville stated.


IEA report: Electricity, hydrogen and CCS to dominateRead more

“The Australian oil and gas industry is a world leader in the practical deployment of carbon capture and storage. In Australia, the oil and gas industry has been at the leading edge of researching and deploying CCS and greenhouse gas storage technologies.”

He claimed CCS would help further reduce the nation's emissions, while also providing a pathway to a large-scale clean hydrogen industry.

“CCS shows that technology can be used to further reduce Australia’s emissions and allows our industry to keep supplying electricity generation and being used for products such as clothes, computers, phones, fertilisers and vital medical equipment such as heart valves,” McConville stated.


Carbon footprint of LNG to become key differentiatorRead more

The Gorgon CCS project sees CO2 separated from the gas stream before processing and liquefaction on Barrow Island, and, instead of being flared, it is then injected into the Jurassic Dupuy Formation at a depth of about 2.5 kilometres.

The project includes nine CO2 injection wells at three drill centres, two pressure management drill centres, two reservoir surveillance wells, a seven-kilometre underground pipeline from the LNG plant site to the drill centres and three CO2 compressor modules.

Chevron has previously claimed the CO2 injection system will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the Gorgon project by about 40%, or more than 100 million tonnes over the life of the project.

Chevron operates the Gorgon project with a 47.3% interest and is partnered by ExxonMobil and Shell, each on 25%, Osaka Gas on 1.25%, Tokyo Gas on 1% and Jera on 0.417%.(Copyright)

Read more

Oil and gas emissions could risk 'killing concept of blue hydrogen', warns Equinor vice president

UK industrial cluster says blue hydrogen needed now to reach net-zero goals

Equinor and SSE look to develop one of world's largest hydrogen storage facilities

Carbon Capture Technology And Its Growing Role in Decarbonisation

By Felicity Bradstock - Mar 25, 2023

• CCS technology is gaining popularity among companies worldwide to decarbonize their operations and avoid carbon taxes.
• 
  
• The International Energy Agency sees CCS as key to the decarbonization of fossil fuel operations and industrial processes, particularly useful as a bridge to greater renewable energy production.
• 
  
• Improved political policies and regulatory frameworks are required to ensure effective rollout of the technology to support a green transition.

With a greater number of climate policies coming into place worldwide, from the Biden Administration’s IRA to the European Union’s New Green Deal, companies are feeling mounting pressure to decarbonise. And while some are doing it to enhance their ESG practices and futureproof their business, others are concerned about rising carbon taxes, which could slash their profits. So, as well as introducing green energy technology, many are turning to carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to support their decarbonisation efforts. Big Oil is pumping billions into CCS equipment at operations around the globe to keep production ‘low-carbon oil’, while other industries, such as manufacturing, are looking to the technology to help clean up operations.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees CCS technology as key to the decarbonisation of fossil fuel operations and industrial processes, particularly useful as a bridge to greater renewable energy production. By 2021, the total annual carbon capture capacity stood at close to 45?Mt?of CO2, a figure that is expected to increase substantially with approximately 300 projects under construction. CCS equipment could capture more than 220 Mt CO2 a year by 2030. This will help companies achieve net-zero ambitions when paired with renewable energy technologies. 

By 2022, 35 commercial facilities were using CCS for industrial processes, fuel transformation, and power generation. Deployment of the technology has been slow to date but investment in the sector is rising sharply, as companies look for ways to reduce their carbon output, improve their ESG practices, and avoid carbon taxes, to support a green transition. However, improved political policies and regulatory frameworks are required to ensure the effective rollout of the technology, in line with climate policies.

Related: Latin America’s Bid To Challenge China’s Dominance In The Lithium Market

According to research by Wood Mackenzie, 2023 will be a milestone year for CCS. The global CCS pipeline rose by more than 50 percent in 2022, with projects planned across several industrial sectors. In recent years, government funding of up to 50 percent has helped CCS projects get off the ground, a trend that is expected to continue. The U.S. government has so far committed $3.7 billion to finance CCS projects and meet its net-zero goal by 2050. The introduction of new climate policies worldwide will also support the uptake of the technology. 

In terms of how the CO2 is used, much of the sequestered carbon is currently going to enhanced oil recovery operations at present, responding to the ongoing need for fossil fuels to ensure energy security worldwide. However, as green energy capacity increases worldwide, much of the CO2 will go to designated storage sites, with 66 percent expected to be pumped deep underground by 2030. New legislation and supporting incentives for CO2 utilisation will encourage this change. 

David Lluis Madrid, the CCUS analyst at BloombergNEF (BNEF), explained, “CCS is starting to overcome its bad reputation.” Madrid added, “It is now being deployed as a decarbonization tool, which means the CO2 needs to be stored. A lack of CO2 transport and storage sites near industrial or power generation point sources could be a major bottleneck to CCS development. But we are already seeing a big increase in these projects to serve that need.” 

One of many projects underway globally is an innovative CCS offshore site, the Greensand project, in the Danish part of the North Sea, where construction began this month. CO2 captured in Belgium will be transported via ship for injection in a depleted oil field, located 120 miles from the North Sea coast. The project is being undertaken by a consortium of companies including Germany’s Wintershall Dea and Britain’s INEOS. It is considered to be the world’s first cross-border offshore carbon dioxide storage with the explicit purpose of tackling climate change.  

Meanwhile, in Norway, a joint venture between Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell is also underway. The Northern Lights project will see 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 injected into saline aquifer near the Troll gas field annually, starting in 2024. In the U.K., the Accorn CCS project is being launched off the coast of Scotland, aimed at creating an annual capacity of 5-10 mtpa of CO2 by 2030. The project is being operated by Storegga, Shell, Harbour Energy and North Sea Midstream Partners. And in the Netherlands, the Porthos project by the Port of Rotterdam, Gasunie, and EBN is expected to provide a storage capacity of 2.5 mtpa of CO2. Porthos will be located in depleted Dutch gas fields in the North Sea, with operations expected to start in 2026.  

Many companies worldwide are now looking to CCS technologies to help them achieve decarbonisation aims without giving up on their traditional operations. The rollout of CCS around the globe will be supported by new climate policies, decarbonisation incentives, and better regulation of the industry. In addition, greater public funding for CCS projects is expected to spur private investment in the sector and boost the world’s CO2storage capacity significantly in the coming decades.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com