Page 12 - NorthAmOil Week 10 2023

NorthAmOil ENERGY TRANSITION NorthAmOil

Occidental unveils proposed

CCUS hub on Gulf Coast

TEXAS OCCIDENTAL Petroleum subsidiary 1Point- Hollub, at the CERAWeek energy conference in
Five has announce d a plan to develop a carbon Houston, Texas.
capture, utilisation and sequestration (CCUS) Siemens will supply a motor-driven
hub on the Texas Gulf Coast. 13,000-horsepower (hp) fully modular wet gas
The 55,000-acre (222.6-square km) site is esti- compressor package and a motor-driven 8,500-
mated to have the potential to store 1.2bn tonnes hp dry gas compressor for the DAC plant. The
of carbon dioxide (CO2) to help industrial facil- equipment will compress the captured CO2 for
ities remove emissions. additional processing and pressurise the final
The Bluebonnet Hub would be located in product into a pipeline for injection into under-
Chambers, Liberty and Jefferson counties, near ground reservoirs, said Siemens.
refineries, chemical plants and manufacturing The plant, on which construction started in
facilities along the Gulf Coast from Beaumont 2022, will be the world’s first large-scale DAC
to Houston. It is expected to be operational in plant once completed.
2026. “Technologies to effectively capture and
Bluebonnet would allow CO2 captured off- sequester CO2 will be a necessity if we want to
site to be stored in natural geologic saline forma- achieve our climate goals,” said Bruch. “Close
tions not associated with oil and gas production. partnerships with partners like Occidental are
1PointFive said it had completed drilling a the base to scale up innovative solutions,” he
stratigraphic test well and subsurface assess- said.
ment to characterise the site’s ability to store “We are leveraging Oxy’s core competence in
CO2. The company expects to apply for two carbon management to capture and sequester
Class VI permits in 2023. atmospheric carbon dioxide to help meet the
1PointFive and a subsidiary of midstream goals of the Paris Agreement and reduce emis-
company Enterprise Products will also co-de- sions globally,” added Hollub. “Our first DAC
velop transport so that CO2 can be gath- plant will advance industrial-scale carbon cap-
ered from regional emitters and delivered to ture to provide a solution to help Oxy and others
Bluebonnet. accelerate their respective paths to net zero.”
“This hub is located between two of the largest The plant is expected to help decarbon-
industrial corridors in Texas so captured CO2 ise hard-to-abate industries that are trying to
can be efficiently transported and safely seques- achieve net zero. Not only can captured CO2
tered,” said 1PointFive Sequestration’s president, be sequestered deep underground in saline for-
Jeff Alvarez. “Rather than starting from scratch mations, it can also be used to produce hydro-
with individual capture and sequestration carbons to enable lower-carbon or net-zero
projects, companies can plug into this hub for transport fuels or in products such as chemicals
access to shared carbon infrastructure,” he said. and building materials, said Siemens.
Policy incentives, including the US Inflation
1PointFive uses Carbon Engineering’s direct
Bluebonnet air capture (DAC) and Air to Fuels technol- Reduction Act (IRA) passed in August 2022,
would allow ogies alongside geologic sequestration hubs. are accelerating DAC technology as a tool to
CO2 captured DAC uses chemical reactions to pull CO2 out help organisations reduce their CO2 emissions,
of the atmosphere. Air to Fuels plants combine noted Siemens.
off-site to be DAC technology with hydrogen generation The US government is offering $3.5bn in
and fuel synthesis to deliver synthetic fuel that funding to help build four DAC facilities in the
stored in natural is near-carbon neutral, according to Carbon US. Occidental, however, has not commented
publicly on its plans with regard to the federal
Engineering’s website.
geologic saline funding.
formations. Siemens contract Occidental’s investment in lower-carbon pro-
Meanwhile, Siemens Energy has announced jects will at least double to $200mn in 2023 and
that its compressors would be used at Occiden- could rise to $600mn, the company announced
tal’s first large-scale DAC plant in Texas’ Permian in February. It is planning to develop sev-
Basin, also being developed by 1PointFive. eral lower-carbon projects along the US Gulf
The two compressor packages will enable the Coast, using DAC, or point source capture and
plant to capture up to 500,000 tonnes per year sequestration for industrial emissions – or both
(tpy) of CO2 when fully operational. methods.
The announcement was made by Siemens However, Occidental recently pushed back
Energy’s president and CEO, Christian Bruch, the start-up of its first-large scale plant from
and Occidental’s president and CEO, Vicki 2024 to mid-2025.™

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