Construction of the world’s largest facility for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) will begin in 2021, in a partnership between Carbon Engineering and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum.
One of the most significant features of this plan is its location in the Permian Basin, the heart of Texas oil country. The plans begin with one plant that will be capable of capturing 500 kilotons of atmospheric CO2 a year, but new facilities will be added to increase capacity, with each additional plant capable of capturing a megaton of CO2 a year.
Occidental plans to then utilize the trapped carbon to boost oil production, but states the crude oil produced would in total still level out to be carbon neutral, or even negative.This is in order to create more investment and a more sustainble business model for the facility.
