Chevron, Exxon, Baker Hughes and SLB are racing to scale up carbon capture and storage across the U.S. as the world races to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.The oil and gas industry is betting that carbon capture and storage will serve a large market of heavy industries like cement and steel that have few good options right now to slash emissions.
The challenges to implementing the technology are immense. The world needs to capture more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030, more than 20 times the 45 million metric tons captured in 2022, according to the IEA. By 2050, the amount of carbon that's captured needs to reach 6 billion tons — more than 130 times the 2022 level, according to the agency.
For International Paper, the Vicksburg project is a potential way to produce lower carbon products for consumers who are climate conscious and a potential opportunity to benefit financially through the sale of carbon credits. Total spending on carbon capture and storage projects is expected to reach $241 billion worldwide by 2030 if all announced projects materialize, according Rystad Energy. The United States and the United Kingdom are the leaders, with investments expected to reach $85 billion and $45 billion, respectively, by the end of the decade, according to Rystad.
"We're quite comfortable that in the next 12 to 24 months, we will be coming to market with actually that chemistry as part of our core offering and develop what we call process design packages," Majkut said. The technology aims to catch low concentration carbon dioxide emissions, which are harder to capture, directly from the atmosphere as well as from industrial plants. Baker Hughes anticipates the technology will most likely come to market by the end of 2026.
Dan Ammann, president of low carbon solutions at Exxon, said those three contracts combined promise to remove 5 million tons of emissions annually — the equivalent of converting 2 million gas-powered cars to electric vehicles. Chevron is the operator and lead investor in a flagship project called Bayou Bend, which has a 140,000 acre position of permanent carbon dioxide storage space near Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas. The project is a joint venture with minority shareholders