International commitments to reduce emissions, a continued reliance on fossil fuels, government regulations and economic incentives have increased worldwide interest in carbon capture, utilization and storage, the process of capturing CO2 and repurposing it for other uses or storing it in geological formations like depleted oil and gas reservoirs or aquifers.
The thirst for CCUS expertise has attendees flocking to conferences like the AAPG, Society of Petroleum Engineers and Society of Exploration Geophysicists’ CCUS Conference in Houston, which has doubled in attendance each year since its inception in 2020.
The 2024 event, coming to the George R. Brown Convention Center on March 11-13, provides a platform for industry, government and academic leaders to share insights and expertise for carbon management.
Each day starts with a keynote talk from speakers who have diverse backgrounds and career paths but agree on the necessity and urgency of deploying CCUS in the United States and beyond.
High-Profile Acquisitions
The opening keynote features Chris Kendall, former president and CEO at Denbury Inc., an independent Plano-based oil and natural gas company purchased by ExxonMobil for $4.9 billion in July 2023.
Kendall joined Denbury in 2015 as chief operation officer and was appointed CEO in 2017. He led the company until the merger with ExxonMobil closed in early November 2023.
Leading an early adopter of CO2 projects was one of the most enjoyable parts of Kendall’s tenure at the company, he said.
“While Denbury was small compared to many other energy companies, our unique focus on CO2 enhanced oil recovery gave us an advantage over the entire industry in CO2 expertise and infrastructure. This put Denbury in a position of leadership when CCUS policy incentives in the United States were increased to meaningful levels beginning in the 2019-2020 timeframe,” he said. “I thoroughly enjoyed being part of a company that could truly make a difference in this important, new industry.”
Denbury’s entry into CCUS started in 1999 when CO2 EOR became its primary focus. During the following two decades, the company developed deep surface and subsurface CO2 management expertise, as well as the largest dedicated CO2 pipeline network in the United States.
“CO2 EOR is a key form of CCUS, so expanding into other facets of CCUS, such as CO2 sequestration in deep saline aquifers, was a natural extension that leveraged Denbury’s expertise and infrastructure,” Kendall said.
Joining forces with ExxonMobil will allow efforts to expand exponentially, he said.
“Denbury’s combination with ExxonMobil has the potential to significantly amplify and accelerate the CO2 emissions impact that Denbury could have achieved on a standalone basis,” he said.
Kendall said the high-profile merger sends a broader message to the energy industry.
“I think this transaction underscores what we’ve known for some time, that CCUS is a key tool for mitigating CO2 emissions from many hard-to-abate industries that produce products that our society needs, and with the right policy incentives, it can be expanded meaningfully,” Kendall said.
Opportunities for Geoscientists
The March 12 keynote speaker is Amanda Raddatz, director of carbon transport and storage at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Over the past decade, Raddatz has contributed to a wide variety of carbon management activities, including site characterization, Class VI permitting, monitoring and risk management. She has supported the planning and development of carbon capture and storage sites on five continents.
Her current role at DOE involves providing strategic direction and coordination of carbon transport and storage projects and research.
Raddatz, geologist and former AAPG member, described her work in CCS as interesting, engaging and fulfilling.
“I get to apply my geology background in new ways, and I learn something new every day,” she said. “It has been exciting to watch the industry grow and develop in recent years, and to be a part of building something from the ground up.”
Raddatz said geoscience is vital to characterize CO2 potential and ensure the safety of CO2 storage operations, and geoscientists interested in pursuing CCUS careers find closely linked opportunities and challenges.
“We’re seeing an unprecedented scale and pace of deployment since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Acts were passed,” she said. “In this environment, geoscientists are facing the challenge and the opportunity to expand their skillsets to learn new tools, methodologies and new topics that were not a part of their repertoire previously.”
Raddatz described CCS as “an essential piece of the carbon management puzzle,” important for achieving global climate goals. She noted that the technology has other applications beyond the oil and gas sector.
“CCS is a key part of decarbonization for power generation and also for the industrial sector, such as hydrogen, cement and steel,” she said.
Raddatz said she looks forward to meeting with a variety of sectors at the CCUS event in Houston.
“This conference brings together organizations and individuals who share a passion for CCS implementation. Their skillsets and experience are important to ensure CCS projects are deployed safely and efficiently” she said. “This conference provides a wonderful opportunity to network, to share ideas, and learn from others. With participants from a wide variety of backgrounds including industry, government, academia and interest groups, there’s an opportunity to learn about CCS from various perspectives.”
Raddatz said while she is honored to share DOE’s role in CCS deployment with this audience, she looks forward to hearing what others have to say.
“I hope to learn about the challenges project developers are facing and see some examples of how roadblocks have been addressed and overcome,” she said.
Partnerships
Shared knowledge and multisectoral alliances are key themes in the March 13 keynote to be delivered by Charles “Chuck” McConnell, executive director for Carbon Management and Energy Sustainability at the University of Houston Center of Carbon Management and Energy.
The Center is designed to meet the lower carbon future energy transition challenges of the oil and gas, petrochemical and electric power markets through collaborative multidisciplinary research.
McConnell said what he most enjoys about CCME are its linkages with industry and multidisciplinary approach to projects.
“We’re connected directly with the marketplace and the actors that are interested in doing things, in actually making an impact,” he said. “Our Center is about commercial deployment and technologies, so we’re looking at pilots and commercial demonstrations. But we’re also doing a lot of things that are non-technical, that are business, legal and policy related and have implications for all the projects. It isn’t just about engineering and science but includes the other areas, so we’re really looking at the entirety of the portfolio of what it’s going to take to make projects work. I find that fascinating.”
McConnell noted that the recent United States legislation, including the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CCUS tax credit changes in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and revisions to the Carbon Sequestration 45 Q tax credit have generated enthusiasm around CCUS projects.
“We have doubled the amount of people in our DOE-sponsored CCUS consortia. We now have over 70 organizations that are part of this this group,” he said, “There’s a lot going on and it’s all basically good, but it’s challenging.”
McConnell said part of the Center’s role is advising companies that have not worked with the DOE or other U.S. government agencies.
“We all know that there’s no such thing as free money, right? There are responsibilities and requirements, nuances in the kind of labor you hire, the rates that you’re paying and your ability to capture the full value of the government sponsored activity,” he said.
“We talk about CCUS as a commercially developing program, but it’s not commercial; it is government sponsored, and there are all kinds of hooks.I think many companies are nervous about it, but they’re concerned that if they don’t get government money and their competitor does, they're going to get left behind,” he said.
McConnell’s work with CCUS started 20 years ago when he oversaw energy business activity at Praxair, an industrial gas company that supplied carbon dioxide.
“I didn’t know anything about geology or any of the issues associated with underground injection of CO2, but through that work, I got engaged in Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership activity across the country,” he said.
His connection with the Partnership led to a position as vice president of carbon management with Battelle and an introduction to the secretary of energy, who offered him a job.
“The next thing you know, I got an invitation to go to Washington, which was the last thing in the world I would have ever expected to do. But it was three years of a wonderful learning experience for sure,” he said.
McConnell served as assistant secretary of energy of fossil energy from 2011-13 and later returned to Houston, where he has worked in industry and academia ever since.
Being Good Stewards
McConnell said his experience in business, government and academia has led to a pragmatic approach to emissions reduction.
“We can debate all day long about climate change and how much of it is from anthropogenic CO2 and everything else. I choose not to get involved in those conversations because I believe it’s just a good thing to do – to be good stewards of how much carbon you put into an atmosphere. Arguing about it to me seems like a colossal waste of time,” he said.
“What I find more important is that many of these companies – and whether it’s oil and gas or petrochemicals, electric power, cement or steel manufacturing – all of them have made commitments to their shareholders and the investment community that they’re going to have a lower carbon footprint. It’s on the radar screen for everybody. And after you do a few things that you can talk about easily, then it starts to get difficult. And the difficulty gets solved by transformative technology and transformative business approaches,” he explained.
Developing those approaches is a key goal for the CCME and other educational institutions who are preparing the next generation of industry leaders.
“We’re trying to get students and educational materials into the marketplace so the existing workforce can be better equipped so that students can get the jobs that they’re going to move into: good jobs, important jobs, jobs that are going to change the world,” McConnell, said.
“I’ve told many of our students, ‘You don’t have to go work for Google or Amazon to change the world. Go to work in these industries who are a part of it. That’s where you’re going to see the high tech, that’s where you’re going to see all the transformational automated intelligence we hear about. That’s where emissions are going to be reduced,” he explained.
During his talk at the CCUS event, McConnell will share results from a CCME whitepaper that focuses on identifying the future need for infrastructure, workforce and supply-chain investment needed for CCUS development, based on different emission reduction targets for 2050.
CCUS as a Requirement
He also plans to share the message that CCUS deployment is no longer a choice for industry.
“The International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and all the other science based organizations that we’re all supposed to pay attention to – not just when it’s convenient, but all the time – state that 15 to 20 percent of the world’s emissions reductions must come from CCUS between now and 2050,” he said, “That’s not suggesting that CCUS is an option; what it’s stating clearly is that it’s a requirement.”
McConnell said that successful CCUS implementation requires an industry-wide, global focus.
“Moving the needle on emissions reduction requires all of our efforts to get CCUS deployed more broadly and to have global penetration, because doing projects in Europe and the United States is way too insufficient,” he said.
“Unless we get this to places like Indonesia, India and China, we’re not going to do anything with the climate. We will be a bunch of people in the developed world patting ourselves on the back for doing fun little science projects. That’s not what it’s about,” he said.
McConnell said international energy companies could be a part of the solution to global emissions reduction.
“International energy companies have that footprint all over the world. They operate everywhere, not just in Houston,” he said. “And many of these industries have many of the necessary capabilities and competencies to address issues associated with CO2 emissions.”
Kendall agreed.
“Considering the skills, tools and infrastructure needed to develop CCUS projects, I can’t imagine an industry that is better suited to advance CCUS, whether it be subsurface modeling and analysis, drilling and operating CO2 injection wells, or the development of pipelines and surface facilities,” he said.
Kendall looks forward to sharing Denbury’s story at the CCUS event in Houston on March 11.
“We are at a fascinating crossroads. Ever-increasing global energy demand is intersecting with the need to reduce global CO2 emissions. CCUS can mitigate billions of tons of CO2 emissions annually, but we are still in the early innings,” he said.
“Our industry is set to lead in CCUS, and I’m excited to share perspectives with the conference attendees.”
For information about the CCUS event and to register visit: CCUSEvent.org.
“We talk about CCUS as a commercially developing program, but it’s not … it is government sponsored, and there are all kinds of hooks. I think many companies are nervous about it, but they’re concerned that if they don’t get government money and their competitor does, they're going to get left behind.”