ExxonMobil agrees to new CCS project with Williams to support natural gas processing in Louisiana

July 29, 2026

Spring-based ExxonMobil Holdings Corp. (NYSE: XOM) is further developing its Gulf Coast carbon capture and storage system in a deal with Tulsa, Oklahoma-based midstream giant Williams Companies Inc. (NYSE: WMB).

The supermajor will transport and store up to 1 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide from Williams’ natural gas gathering and processing facility in southwest Louisiana. Williams will transport natural gas from the Haynesville Shale to the facility through the Louisiana Energy Gateway pipeline, process the natural gas and then deliver it to the Gulf Coast to be exported as liquefied natural gas.

This is ExxonMobil’s seventh commercial contract for carbon transportation and storage, totaling 9 million tonnes per year of contracted carbon dioxide storage. Now, the company officially has more storage capacity from third-party CCS contracts than it expected to have from its proposed blue hydrogen project in Baytown, which would have produced 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be captured and stored before development was suspended.

ExxonMobil paused spending on the project in November as a result of H.R. 1, the “big, beautiful bill” Trump signed into law last summer, which forced hydrogen projects to start construction by the beginning of 2028 instead of the end of 2033 to be eligible for 45V tax credits. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said earlier in 2025 the bill could be a problem for the hydrogen market as the company worked to find customers and establish a broader hydrogen network.

Building a CCS network

ExxonMobil received approval last year from the Environmental Protection Agency for its Rose carbon capture and storage project in Jefferson County, which will be a key piece of its efforts to build out a carbon storage system. ExxonMobil launched those efforts when it acquired Denbury Inc. for $4.9 billion in 2023. The company has CCS projects planned from Baytown to Yazoo City, Mississippi, which are connected by the carbon dioxide pipelines formerly owned by Denbury.

The Rose project will be able to inject an average of between 1.1 million and 1.67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year into each of three wells, with a maximum total of 5 million tonnes per year across all three wells over 13 years.

Louisiana-based CF Industries Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CF) is expected to benefit from this carbon dioxide network. In 2022, ExxonMobil committed to providing 2 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide transportation and storage from CF Industries' Donaldsonville Complex. CF Industries announced in July 2025 it had started up its carbon dioxide dehydration and compression facility at the complex, but ExxonMobil hasn’t been ready to use its dedicated storage wells yet.

In its July 2025 announcement, CF Industries said ExxonMobil would store the carbon dioxide on an interim basis in geologic sites through enhanced oil recovery. Once ExxonMobil received its applicable permits, it would transition to dedicated permanent storage, starting with the Rose CCS project.

ExxonMobil also has agreements to transport and store carbon dioxide with:

• CF Industries for a second, 500,000-tpa contract from its nitrogen facility in Yazoo City, Mississippi.
• Linde PLC (Nasdaq: LIN) for a 2.2 million-tpa contract in Beaumont.
• Nucor Steel Corp. (NYSE: NUE) for an 800,000-tpa contract in Louisiana.
• New Generational Gas Gathering for a 1.2 million tpa-contract in Louisiana.
• Lake Charles Methanol II for a 1.1 million-tpa contract in Louisiana.

ExxonMobil also had made an agreement with Calpine Corp., which has since been acquired by Constellation Energy Corp. (Nasdaq: CEG), to store up to 2 million tonnes per year from its Baytown Energy Center. However, that agreement was linked to ExxonMobil's own Baytown hydrogen project, so it has also been paused.

ExxonMobil also recently inked the largest offshore lease for carbon dioxide storage in the U.S., leasing 271,000 acres in Texas state waters near Jefferson, Chambers and Galveston counties form the Texas General Land Office.