The business model for carbon capture is broken - biggest use of captured carbon is now uneconomical

[progree]

The business model for carbon capture is broken, Quartz, 8/13/20

In the months since the pandemic cratered the price of oil, the financial fallout has spread from drilling companies to refineries and oilfield maintenance companies. Now the crash has claimed another, more unlikely victim: The only system built to capture carbon emissions from a coal plant in the US, one of only two worldwide.

... But on July 28, E&E News broke the story that the facility has been shuttered since May. And while the plant’s owners have said they plan to get it running again once the economy improves, Petra Nova’s shutdown exposes the weird market dynamics that could threaten the sustainability of carbon capture facilities in progress around the world.

... The trouble is, there’s not a whole lot you can do with the CO2 after you capture it. That makes the economic case for installing a big, expensive piece of equipment a bit shaky.

... the use with the greatest market potential today is, ironically for a climate project, oil drilling. That’s what Petra Nova went after.

So-called “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR) projects inject CO2 into oil wells to shake loose the dregs stuck in subterranean rocky pores.

... In order to operate, the system requires oil prices of at least $75 per barrel. Otherwise, it’s not worth the oil company’s money to bother purchasing CO2 for EOR. Even before the pandemic, the oil price was around $60; after briefly dipping below zero in April, it’s now around $40. Few experts expect the price to return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon, if ever.

[hatrack]

1. This particular approach never made a lick of sense anyway . . .

Yeah, let's go to great expense to capture CO2 and use it to pump more oil out of the ground, so that we can burn it . . .

[progree]

4. When oil was $90 or $100/bbl or whatever, and this was the most cost-effective way

for an oil company to produce the next million barrels to meet demand, as it apparently was because they didn't buy the CO2 for shits and giggles (not to mention that it is the greenest way at least CO2-wise overall to produce the oil people demand -- and if they didn't and prices rose and rose and oil company executives were hauled before Congress to explain),

and considering that we consumers are buying gas-guzzling SUVs and real-man pickup trucks, and making all kinds of excuses for doing so (yeah, I'm a wonderfully wonderful environmentalist, but I have 3 kids and haul stuff around a lot) and can't stand the thought of our houses being more than 1/2 degree from perfect, and on and on about our energy guzzling ways, and yes, we scream when gasoline prices go up 10 cents and post all over DU about how the CPI doesn't include gasoline prices (false, it does), and and

I worked in an electric utility company, and yes, it would be a hell of a lot better if we just didn't produce electricity, as the hippies constantly reminded us over and over and over again and again and again.

Sigh.

let's go to great expense to capture CO2 and use it to pump more oil out of the ground, so that we can burn it

Well then for Chrissake, stop buying the stuff. That includes petrochemicals and plastic.

[Midnight Writer]

2. Carbon capture was a fantasy fostered by the fossil fuel industry.

[Duppers]

3. "If ever" 😩