World - Fossil Fuel Companies Made Bold Promises to Capture Carbon. Here’s What Actually Happened.
A DeSmog review of 12 large-scale projects reveals a litany of cost-overruns and missed targets, with a net increase in emissions.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) was high on the agenda at New York Climate Week last week, where critics of the technology raised concerns it would be used to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
For years, experts have pointed out that CCS has been primarily used to pump more oil out of the earth, using a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Burning that oil emits far more carbon dioxide (CO2) than what is captured, and therefore CCS doesn’t represent a viable solution to tackle climate change, critics argue.
At a news conference after the one-day UN Climate Ambition Summit on September 20, Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, said: “The oil companies acknowledged this year that they will not meet their bogus net zero commitments. The data showed us that their carbon capture plans are not working at scale.”
Below is a DeSmog review of the climate impact of 12 large-scale CCS projects around the world; what the fossil fuel industry promised, and what actually happened. Findings include a litany of missed carbon capture targets; cost-overruns, and billions of dollars of costs to taxpayers in the form of subsidies.
The data is drawn from various sources, including the Global CCS Institute; the International Energy Agency; the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis; the Geoengineering Monitor, and DeSmog research. Data on subsidies was provided by Oil Change International, which plans to launch a database of government support for CCS in 2024. Currency conversions were made in respect to exchange rates when subsidies were first announced or given.
What CCS Projects Promise. And What They Deliver.
1. Terrell Natural Gas Processing Plant (“Val Verde”)
Operator: Occidental Petroleum, 1972-present
Location: Southeast of Ft. Stockton, Texas, USA
Stated maximum capacity: 0.5 million tonnes of CO2/year
Storage method: Enhanced oil recovery in the Permian Basin
Public subsidies: None
What they said would happen: More crude oil would be extracted using injected CO2.
What actually happened: It worked. Val Verde’s success served as a replicable model enabling the oil industry to pump more oil while claiming to be helping the climate.
Background: The world’s first industrial carbon capture facility began siphoning CO2 from a complex of West Texas gas processing plants in 1972. The gas was then piped across the region to boost the productivity of oil wells. Now owned by Occidental Petroleum and re-named the Terrell Natural Gas Processing Plant, the facility has aided in the production of millions of additional barrels of crude.
Val Verde’s success helped the oil and gas sector develop a business model enabling them to profit long into the future. It simultaneously acted as a potential solution to the worsening greenhouse gas crisis, while still remaining the biggest source of that pollution.
The first dedicated facility to use injected CO2 to produce more oil, Val Verde was instrumental in pioneering enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The technique proved so successful that within a decade drillers had built thousands of miles of dedicated pipelines sending naturally occurring CO2 into oil fields in Texas, elsewhere in the U.S., and eventually other nations.
Based upon Val Verde, since the 1970s, U.S. oil firms have led in the development of ever more efficient EOR-CCS technologies. Though now practiced globally, Texas’ Permian has the largest concentration of EOR operations.
As awareness grew that burning fossil fuels was increasingly harmful to the environment, petroleum scientists began looking for industry-friendly solutions. Given that a fraction of the CO2 injected during EOR remains underground, as early as 1977 proponents suggested rebranding EOR into climate-friendlier carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Envisioning installing capture units on fossil fuel-burning generation plants, particularly coal-fired power stations, backers saw this as an elegant response to growing concerns over carbon emissions.
Fifty years later, Val Verde still serves as the industry’s model for “beneficial” CO2 usage, and EOR remains the main driver and successful business model for CCS.
