ExxonMobil is working with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to provide carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a service for industrial customers.
The companies will use support from Kansai Electric Power Company (Kepco) to provide end-to-end CCS solutions that reduce the cost of carbon capture for heavy-emitting industrial customers.
“Adding Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ leading carbon capture technology to ExxonMobil’s transportation and storage capabilities enables this compelling offering,” ExxonMobil low-carbon solutions president Dan Ammann said.
On the carbon capture side, the companies will build on the KM CDR Process and Advanced KM CDR Process, developed by Mitsubishi and Kepco, which is liquid amine carbon capture technology that is commercially demonstrated at greater than 1 million tonnes per annum.
“Carbon capture and storage technology and innovation are critical to our path to net zero,” Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering chief executive Kenji Terasawa said.
“As an expert in advanced engineering, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is committed to leading the way in achieving decarbonisation goals through strategic collaboration and investments in new technologies.
“We look forward to partnering with ExxonMobil to continue advancing carbon capture technologies to provide essential carbon neutrality solutions for various industries.”
Collaborations between US supermajors and hard-to-abate sectors have been announced for several CCS projects across the US, but many of the projects are still in the talking stage.
For end-to-end CCS solutions and decarbonisation hubs, companies will be required to form new partnerships to get things done.
The Houston CCS Alliance, a collaboration spearheaded by ExxonMobil, plans to capture up to 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by 2040 and store it underground offshore the US Gulf Coast.
Individual projects are being planned, including ExxonMobil’s Baytown Refinery CCS project, but shared transportation and storage infrastructure lacks an operator to initiate it.
“I don’t think there’s a gap when it comes to collaboration. Everybody wants to collaborate and talk about it,” Siemens Energy North America president Richard Voorberg said at the Reuters Energy Transition North America conference. Instead, he said there’s a gap in getting things done.
To reduce the high costs of carbon capture, many oil and gas companies intend to use the hub approach, which allows individual emitting facilities to deploy the specific carbon capture technology required while sharing CO2 transport and underground injection networks with nearby projects.
Along the US Gulf coast, several different hubs in Texas and Louisiana will likely be connected through pipelines and injection wells, but the interested companies are still figuring out how to make the projects successful, Chevron new energies president Jeff Gustavson told Upstream.
While there may by several sequestration points due to high anticipated capture volumes, much of the infrastructure is sure to be shared.
“There’s no point in building 12 CO2 lines that go offshore,” Gustavson said.
“Sharing as much infrastructure as possible is the name of the game.”
Although many of the logistics of hubs like the Houston CCS Alliance still need to be worked out, Gustavson said he gives ExxonMobil a lot of credit for setting up the collaboration, making the first move in a visionary project.
Read more
