When the CEO of Occidental Petroleum described the company’s future this week, it was clear the company will not be moving away from hydrocarbons.
By 2050, Occidental expects to still be a big oil company, but producing oil and natural gas is not likely to be its biggest source of revenue. Nor will solar or wind.
Several decades from now, Vicki Hollub, the president and chief executive officer of Occidental, predicted that income from carbon capture and storage “will be bigger than oil production revenue.”
During the plenary session for the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) she described how Occidental is scaling up its carbon-capture business, beginning with a facility in the Permian Basin with the capacity to capture 1 million tons of CO
(Oxy Low Carbon Ventures/PR Newswire) Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV), a subsidiary of Occidental (NYSE: OXY), and bio-engineering startup Cemvita Factory today announced a plan to construct and operate a one metric ton per month bio-ethylene pilot plant, applying a jointly developed technology using human-made carbon dioxide (CO
2) instead of hydrocarbon-sourced feedstocks.
The pilot project will scale up the process that was successful in laboratory tests, which showed the OLCV-Cemvita technology is competitive with hydrocarbon-sourced ethylene processes. Ethylene is widely used in the chemical industry, primarily as a precursor to polymers for use in items like durable, long-life products. Start-up of the pilot plant is expected in 2022.
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Direct Air Capture and Big Oil Details
CLIMATE POLITICS-CNBC recently produced a 17-minute video about direct air capture (DAC) and corporations, specifically big oil, funding R&D operations.
The video discusses the basic technology, as well as some pitfalls. Direct air capture is in early stages of developing technology to remove atmospheric CO2. (Source: Money is Pouring Into Carbon Capture Tec, But Challenges Remain, CNBC, March 3, 2021)
By implication, the oil giants are clearly aware of what’s at stake (a) the planet is stressed almost beyond limits (b) there’s some money to be made trying to fix it (c) it’s a great PR gig. But the problem is much bigger and more complex than oil and gas betting on early-stage development of technology to capture the same emissions they created in the first instance. Direct air capture is complex and expensive with sizeable infrastructure requirements, explained in further detail hereinafter, a real eye-
by Robert Hunziker / March 12th, 2021
CNBC recently produced a 17-min video about direct air capture (DAC) and corporations, specifically big oil, funding R&D operations. The video discusses the basic technology, as well as some pitfalls. Direct air capture is in early stages of developing technology to remove atmospheric CO2.
By implication, the oil giants are clearly aware of what’s at stake (a) the planet is stressed almost beyond limits (b) there’s some money to be made trying to fix it (c) it’s a great PR gig. But, the problem is much bigger and more complex than oil and gas betting on early stage development of technology to capture the same emissions they created in the first instance. Direct air capture is complex and expensive with sizeable infrastructure requirements, explained in further detail hereinafter, a real eye-opener.