Two years ago, Oil and Gas Company Occidental purchased Carbon Capture Attenup Carbon Engineering. The deal is hailed as a win-win: A climate technology company scores a lot, and a fossil fuel company gains a foothold in an industry, which is worth mentioning $150 billion By 2050.
Now, we have a better understanding of why Westerners are keen on expensive technology: they want to use it to pump more oil.
Previously, the company said it would use the technology zero Its climate impact. However, during this week’s Western revenue call, CEO Vicki Hollub changed the tune, saying Co injection2 Entering the well to force more oil is crucial to increase oil production.
“Train the company2 In the atmosphere is a technology that needs to work for the United States, and President Trump knows the business case for this. “Hollub said. The edge is the first Report In the comments.
Comparison of Hollub using CO2 To enhance oil recovery rates for oil and water, this technology has caused U.S. oil and gas production to soar.
But direct air capture, technology used by carbon engineering to map CO2 In the atmosphere, the price per metric ton remains expensive, with prices ranging from $600 to $1,000. However, the Inflation Reduction Act provides some important incentives for the use of captured CO2 To enhance oil recovery, if natural gas is permanently stored underground, it will be up to $130 per metric ton in 2026. That’s not enough to make the practice attractive in itself, but coupled with carbon credit sales, the West expects it to be able to pass At the end of ten years.
The Trump administration has been working to remove climate-related government incentives, especially the Lower Inflation Act. But with the support of Western companies and other companies ExxonMobil Tax credits may survive.
Carbon capture and fossil fuel companies have a long and tangled history. They first began pumping oil into withered wells in the 1970s, although the company2 From underground sediments. In the early 1980s, pipelines began to extend from Texas, but low oil prices prevented the technology from being widely used.
About a decade ago, NRG Energy took advantage of the rise in oil prices to build the country’s first carbon capture facility attached to a coal-fired power plant. The small unit is designed to capture one-third of a boiler carbon dioxide and use the CO2 Enhance production on a marked oil field in southwest Houston.
It works, though not as expected. Production rises from about 300 barrels per day to 6,000 barrelsa big bump, but half of it predict. NRG closed Petra Nova in 2020 as oil prices floated amid the pandemic and sold it to JX Nippon three years later.
Oil prices have since recovered, but using CO has enhanced oil recovery rates2 The still unattractive part is because there isn’t enough gas to easily get – at least not enough to increase production by 50 billion to 70 billion barrels, and Holub predicts the technology will unlock.
Direct air capture can easily provide enough CO2. For the past century and a half, humans have been burning fossil fuels into the air. Carbon captured from the air may be used to make oil Carbon negativewhich means that the process of storing diamond oil issuing more carbon than burning carbon, although further research on the concept is needed.
It’s hard to know whether the incentives captured directly by the federal government will survive the next four years. But of all the tax credits in the Lower Inflation Act, oil companies may have the best chance of continuing their business as usual.
