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NorthAmOil ENERGY TRANSITION NorthAmOil

ExxonMobil says decarbonisation

business could outgrow oil and gas

US EXXONMOBIL and Linde have signed a long- 10 or more years’ time, the company said in a
term agreement for the offtake of carbon dioxide webcast on April 4. The Texas-based company
(CO2) at Linde’s proposed clean hydrogen pro- said it planned to invest around $17bn in low-
duction plant in Beaumont, Texas. er-emission energy solutions up to the end of
This comes after an ExxonMobil executive 2027, equivalent to around 10% of its spending
said that the supermajor’s decarbonisation on fossil fuel projects by the same date.
business could eventually eclipse its oil and gas “This [low-carbon] business is going to look
business. quite a bit different than the base business of
Under the agreement with Linde, ExxonMo- Exxon Mobil,” said the president of ExxonMo-
bil will transport and store up to 2.2mn tonnes bil’s Low Carbon Business Solutions unit, Dan
per year (tpy) of CO2 from Linde’s hydrogen Ammann. “It is going to have a much more sta- The supermajor’s
production facility, equivalent to the emissions ble, or less cyclical, profile.”
from nearly 500,000 cars per year, the companies The supermajor’s low-carbon business could low-carbon
said. ultimately be worth “hundreds of billions of
Linde’s Beaumont facility, which would sup- dollars” and could be “larger than ExxonMobil’s business could
ply hydrogen to offtakers such as ExxonMobil, is base business is today as the world approaches
expected to be completed in 2025. It would also net zero”, he said. ultimately be
supply the proposed OCI Global blue ammonia Governments’ regulatory and policy support worth “hundreds
complex with industrial gases and would con- for carbon pricing as well as the cost of abating
sist of air separation units, a carbon capture and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will determine of billions of
sequestration (CCS) facility, and an auto thermal how quickly ExxonMobil can enter the low-car-
reactor. bon industry, he added. dollars”.
“Clean hydrogen is a key enabler of indus- The company foresees a “molecules” market
try’s transition to a low-carbon economy,” for itself consisting of CCS, hydrogen and biofu-
said Linde’s senior vice president of the Amer- els that is worth $6 trillion by 2050. In that time-
icas, Dan Yankowski. “Working with Exxon- frame, it does not foresee entering the “electron”
Mobil as the carbon dioxide offtaker at our market of wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and
Beaumont project supports Linde’s strategy to nuclear, it said.
decarbonise customer processes while safely ExxonMobil’s decarbonisation plan is also
and reliably supplying low-carbon hydrogen noteworthy because the company has remained
at scale.” focused on oil and gas even as its rivals, espe-
ExxonMobil sees the low-carbon market as cially in Europe, have diversified into renewable
ultimately worth multi-trillions of dollars in and other low-carbon energy.™

Week 14 06•April•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P13