EMISSION REDUCTIONS AS ECONOMIC TOOL
Industrial CO2 Vent-Stack Capture, Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS)
At one time, four natural gas processing plants in West Texas were venting over 100 million cubic feet of CO2 per day (2 million tonnes per year) into the atmosphere. In the mid-1970s, the industrial CO2 was gathered by a Pennzoil pipeline. But when Pennzoil sold the CO2 gathering pipeline in 1996, it was converted into a natural gas transportation service, stranding the CO2 and causing millions of tonnes per year of CO2 to be vented once again.
In 1996, a Bluesource affiliate began negotiations with the four gas treating plants in an attempt to reconnect the emitted CO2 to a new pipeline and to deliver the CO2 to enhanced oil recovery projects in West Texas, where the CO2 could be utilized and captured underground.By 1997, an investment of over $15 million was made to construct a new CO2 gathering pipeline and to renovate the existing CO2 compression.
To date, reductions in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere from the investment have surpassed 20 million tonnes. Without the economic benefit from the sale of carbon dioxide emission reduction offsets, this investment never would have been made and the resulting environmental benefits never realized.
The Val Verde CO2 Pipeline project launched Bluesource’s education and practice of large-scale CO2 capture and sequestration. Since 1997, other Bluesource-led and affiliated CCUS projects in Wyoming and Texas have captured an additional 15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Over 50 projects have been evaluated using various capture technologies and applied to CO2 vent sources across the Gulf Coast, Midwest and Atlantic States.
