American multinational ExxonMobil yesterday (21 October) announced it had started the process to begin expanding its carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity at LaBarge – its Wyoming-based facility. According to the company, this site has to date captured more carbon dioxide than any other site in the world, and currently represents just under 20% of all CO2 captured globally.
Under the new expansion plans (valued at around $400m), it is expected that carbon capture at the site will increase to a million metric tonnes of CO2 per year. This is on top of the six to seven million tonnes already captured annually at the facility.
In a statement on the news, ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions president Joe Blommaert said the upscaling demonstrates the company’s commitment to ‘advancing CCS projects around the world’.
“This technology is critical to help meet society’s lower-emissions goals, and with the right policies in place, is immediately deployable,” he says. “ExxonMobil has long supported policies that provide a predictable price on carbon emissions, which enable new or expanded carbon capture and storage investments.”
Currently, the expansion plans are in the design and permitting phase, with a request for bids from third parties for engineering, procurement and construction contracts released. Depending on the success of these bids, as well as regulatory approval, work could begin as soon as 2025, with a final investment decision anticipated by 2022.
A number of other large-scale CCS projects are currently being assessed by ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, located throughout Europe, Asia and the US Gulf Coast.
CCS technology has been highlighted as a potentially pivotal means of decarbonising global operations, with International Energy Agency predictions suggesting CCS projects could help to mitigate up to 15% of global emissions by 2040. Similarly, the UK Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates the tech could halve the cost of global decarbonisation efforts.
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