Oxy’s new carbon capture hub could trap 1.2B metric tons of East Texas greenhouse gases
March 2, 2023
A 55,000-acre site straddling three East Texas counties could soon be home to one of Occidental Petroleum’s carbon capture hubs, the Houston oil giant said Thursday.
The site runs along the Gulf Coast in Chambers, Liberty and Jefferson counties, where refineries and chemical plants emit enough carbon dioxide to create an opportunity for the Oxy's carbon capture subsidiary, 1PointFive. The company plans to store as much as 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide at the East Texas hub, which is expected to come online in 2026.
It’s one of five such hubs that Oxy is planning in industrial areas of Texas and Louisiana, where it aims to provide a solution to the problem of climate-warming pollution. It broke ground on its first direct air capture plant in the Permian Basin last year and, in November, announced plans for a massive carbon capture hub south of Corpus Christi.
A subsurface assessment and a test well at the East Texas site demonstrated its ability to safely store carbon in salt formations, Oxy said in a statement. The company is also working with Houston-based pipeline giant Enterprise Products Partners on a potential pipeline network capable of carrying carbon dioxide from emitters to the so-called “Bluebonnet” hub.
“This hub is located between two of the largest industrial corridors in Texas, so captured CO2 can be efficiently transported and safely sequestered,” 1PointFive President Jeff Alvarez said. “Rather than starting from scratch with individual capture and sequestration projects, companies can plug into this hub for access to shared carbon infrastructure.”
amanda.drane@houstonchronicle.com