The Environmental Protection Agency has approved a Texas company’s application to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and inject it underground, becoming the first project in the state to be awarded such a permit.
Occidental Petroleum Corporation, a Houston-based oil firm, will start storing 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in deep, non-permeable rock formations 4,400 feet underground as soon as this year. The facility will be located 20 miles southwest of Odessa.
“This is a significant milestone for the company as we are continuing to develop vital infrastructure that will help the United States achieve energy security,” Vicky Hollub, the company’s president and CEO, said in a statement. She said these permits will help energy companies “address their emissions or produce vital resources and fuels.”
Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of oil and gas production and the largest contributor to climate change. Oil and gas facilities leak or vent the greenhouse gas, which traps heat in the atmosphere and prevents it from cooling. Environmentalists and the oil and gas industry are divided over the environmental benefits of carbon capture.
While the industry has hedged its climate goals on the technology, environmental policy experts remain skeptical about whether it significantly reduces air pollution, saying the world should transition to other fuel sources to slow climate change. Some Texas scientists say the injection method has been tested and proven to work for years and now needs to be implemented.
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Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, an oil and gas watchdog group, said Oxy’s permit application did not include details regarding the layers where the carbon dioxide would be stored. She said that omitting this information gives residents no assurance that the gas will stay put, adding that the public should have been allowed to evaluate that information.
Occidental had previously received a grant from the Department of Energy to support the development of direct air capture technology. There’s no mention of that in this story – the grant was awarded in October 2023, so who even knows if they have received or will receive all of the promised funds – but it seems likely that there’s a connection. I expressed my opinion of carbon capture in that post, and it’s the same now as it was then, so click over if you’re curious. I hope this works.
O&G companies can’t store fracking fluid underground without causing widespread earthquakes. Regardless of these being much deeper wells, this may be a ‘hold my beer’ moment for Gaia.
I’ll grab the popcorn.