The biggest “takeaway” from the recent 2022 CO₂ Conference was that the excitement for surface CO₂ capture and geologic storage was in a ‘full-swing’ mode. Some believe now that 200 capture projects are being planned in the U.S. and worldwide project planning is accelerating as well.

The week started with a briefing at the beautiful new University of Texas of the Permian Basin’s Engineering Building by our field trip host company, CapturePoint LLC. From there the packed bus headed to the Emma CO₂ EOR project about 45 minutes north and west of Midland. This is a new CO₂ injection project in a 90-year-old field. The field trip was followed by three days of events at the George and Barbara Bush Center in downtown Midland where everyone noticed the very high level of energy and the large number of developing plans for capture projects. Most attendees had participated in previous conferences where speakers had presented carbon capture and storage project plans but the few presented this year were clearly further along and advanced when compared to those discussed in the past. Most projects are still confidential but the sideline discussions in private conversations were advanced; some were actually scheduled to break ground as early as 2023. What was driving the evolving plans was clearly the ESG boardroom pressures and the 45Q tax credit incentive enhancements. Those in the audience observed that the heightened level of enthusiasm and energy was real and the numbers attending during the week reflected the momentum as well. In spite of the Conference’s policy of avoiding widespread marketing, this event set a modern attendance record with approximately 300 attendees. Unlike many conferences, most attending were technical or business planners and were present for all three days of meetings. They came from five international locations and 22 different States. Ten percent tuned in virtually but had to miss a great opportunity to network and dialogue with the folks with a wide variety of big business plans.

As mentioned, the newly amended 45Q was the central talk of the crowd and its impact seemed to be imbedded in every presentation as well as the hundreds of side-bar discussions. The Assistant Secretary of Energy, the Honorable Brad Crabtree, who has been a loyal attendee in past conferences, opened the formal Conference meetings by addressing the audience with enthusiastic statements around the US DOE’s mandate to aggressively pursue decarbonization projects on an accelerated pace. He had wanted to attend in person again this year. As he said, he wanted to rub elbows with real project developers. However, at the last minute was called to Egypt to help hasten development of new natural gas reserves for Europe so had to virtually connect from Cairo. Among several other comments, he mentioned the DOE is authorized to lend over $200 billion to advance capture and storage projects. This project stimulant is, of course, in addition to the new enhancements in the 45Q tax credits. He also stated briefly that the thrust of DOE’s work will be toward lending to capture projects which intend to inject anthropogenic CO₂ into deep saline formations but reminded the audience that CO₂ EOR, with its incidental storage monitored, reported and verified, is definitely in the toolbox. Permitting times for new projects were discussed. For many attending, there is a growing realization that most deep-saline projects will be slow in getting permits to commence injection and, with the orders from the boardroom to get moving rapidly to meet emission target timelines, the attention needed for storage can get secondary consideration.

Secretary Crabtree cautioned the audience that there is a strong contingent at DOE that wants to avoid ANY Federal support for producing more oil. This leads his organization toward supporting deep saline formation “waste CO₂” injection. However, timelines for CO₂ EOR with ‘incidental’ storage are faster with most States having Class II injection well primacy. Due to the tax credit qualification, the EPA is in the loop but is now proving to have an appropriate and usually short timeline for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) storage permits. He encouraged the attendees to keep pushing ahead and emphasized that the USDOE is there to assist.

The rest of the Tuesday carbon management workshop took a deep dive into the many emerging policies, drivers and possible hurdles for large scale CO₂ capture, transport, and secure geologic storage. A notable in-person speaker, Sarah Forbes, who the Director of CCUS at CEQ at the White House took the time from her busy job to make the trip out to Midland. She is the point person there on the topics of CCS and the audience suspected she had to work her way through the hassles of getting approvals to personally attend and speak in the fastest growing oil and gas province in the world. She was in attendance for two of the three days and spoke to the need for greenhouse gas emission reductions. She also commented that she was encouraged by the Conference attendance and the numbers of developing capture projects she was hearing about.

Three other notable topics were related to the insurance challenges for CCS projects, the Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) pressures, and the emerging trials of qualifying for Federal funding and being in synch with the Executive Order 14008 that implements “J-40” which is about social/environmental justice and equity.

The Wednesday session was a full day event entitled “Carbon Capture and Geological Storage; Preserving Sound Practices in the Field.” The actual field personnel of the West Texas audience are experienced in a broad understanding of the characteristics needed for secure, long-term geologic storage. It was a perfect time and ideal place to have the session some had nicknamed “good sites, bad sites.”

The drivers for all the new project planning were summarized in an early panel which was followed by case histories of large-scale CO₂ and water injection projects. Many lessons come from those and the day was partially devoted to talking about future projects avoiding some of the unfortunate lessons learned. It was mentioned that the incentives are all placed with the surface interests; i.e., the plants with the emissions and the pipelines to take the emissions to underground storage sites. This can lead to huge investments for capture and transportation but possibly leading to geologic storage in sites not well suited for permanent storage. Therefore, the day was devoted to publicly discussing the storage risk factors, many of which have not yet surfaced in open fashion in any widespread way. The lessons include new observations from the large volume water disposal in the fast evolving horizontal well plays of the last decade. Jens Lundstern of the US Geological Survey described the new learnings there and the analog to large volume CO₂ disposal. There needs to be a long list of key site attributes to characterize and accomplish early in the planning stage of a CCS project. These include seal Integrity (both above and below the injection formation), lateral continuity of the reservoir and estimating the inevitable asymmetry of plume expansions, fluid transmissive natural fractures, induced seismicity lessons coming now from large volume water disposal, leaky wellbores, soft sediments versus hard rocks and hard cement columns, formation ‘overload’, and weight induced subsidence in soft sediments.

The last day of the Conference was devoted to CO₂ EOR which now is beginning to include carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) where the injected CO₂ is sourced from surface industrial plants. Mike Moore attempted to summarize the first carbon management session with Mr. Melzer following with a summary of the day devoted to good and poor site attributes. Then several CO₂ EOR and CCUS case histories dove into the detail designs and performance of the floods. A Vietnamese speaker came all the way to West Texas to interact and describe a fascinating new miscible gas project in offshore Viet Nam. One ultimate goal there is to find a reservoir home for captured CO₂ when the CCS industry gets mobilized in Asia. The Conference concluded with an updated survey of the CO₂ EOR projects in the U.S. by one of the long-time sponsors of the conference, Advanced Resources International group.