Fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana, estimate their catch has fallen catastrophically from 1 million tons a season to 150,000 tons since the parish’s first liquefied natural gas terminal began operating eight years ago. I am doing it.
New industries are now developing in waters that were once the nation’s most productive for fish, shrimp, and oysters.
It is developed by a company called OnStream CO2. GeoDura Hubmillions of tons of carbon dioxide captured from the fossil fuel industry, including an LNG terminal located more than a mile deep off the coast of Cameron Parish, could be stored, the report said. It would be the first of its kind in the United States. There are currently only a few projects around the world developing ocean carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
“These guys are smart, but they don’t have any common sense,” Travis Darder said of the project. Mr Darder is a Cameron-based fisherman and founder of the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH).
According to report In a best-case scenario, the injection of captured carbon could temporarily disrupt fisheries for drilling or seismic testing, according to the International Center for Environmental Law.
In the worst-case scenario, underwater carbon sequestration wells could fail, releasing stored carbon and killing plants, fish, and even people on boats above. If carbon capture and sequestration allows the fossil fuel industry to maintain its status as one of the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitters, as opponents argue, then carbon storage will have a global impact. There is a possibility that it will bring about
Julie Durmanski / Julie Durmanski LLC
The federal government, which is supporting the GeoDura hub with a recently announced $26 million grant, and geologists who study carbon storage say ocean sequestration projects make a lot of sense.
But like other climate change mitigation efforts supported by the Inflation Control Act and bipartisan infrastructure legislation; hydrogen and intake air directly — The effectiveness of ocean carbon storage is unknown. Concerns and claims on both sides of the ocean carbon capture debate are mostly hypothetical and based on modeling and a few existing ocean storage sites.
Gulf offshore carbon storage promoted
The geology of the Gulf of Mexico, combined with fossil fuel-intensive industries along the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, makes carbon capture and sequestration in the Gulf of Mexico an effective way to address the nation’s emissions. This is the single best opportunity to develop the CCS industry in the United States.” Tip Meckel, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, told a 2022 Congressional committee.
Recognizing that possibility, Congress directed federal agencies to develop regulations that would allow carbon storage in federal offshore waters. The draft regulations required by November 2022 have not yet been published. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Floodlight it will issue the first draft of the proposed rule later this year.
Meanwhile, the companies have focused on developing carbon storage facilities off the coast of Louisiana, which controls a 5.5-mile stretch of state waters off the coast, and about 16 miles of water off the coast of Texas.
Meckel said 10 projects, including GeoDura, have been proposed in both states. Louisiana, unlike Texas, has the authority to allow carbon storage underground, including in the state’s water.
Marine Protection Report: Strengthening offshore oil and gas decommissioning standards to protect oceans and taxpayers
However, the development of carbon storage in waters near the coast has raised concerns about the increasing number of abandoned, idle, or old oil and gas wells. close to shore it might be possible allow Stored carbon can flow out of existing wells. There are also questions about whether Louisiana will be successful in permitting and regulating carbon storage.
“While not impossible, we are highly skeptical given the history of this technology, particularly the lack of pollution monitoring in the Gulf Coast and Louisiana waters,” said Scott Eustis, director of community science. he said. Healthy Gulf is a community and environmental advocacy organization based in Louisiana.
Onshore and offshore land grabbing
The concept of storing carbon below the surface of the ocean was strengthened by the Inflation Control Act of 2022, which increased the tax credit for capturing and permanently storing carbon underground from $39 to $85 per ton. Ta. The incentives have spurred a development boom in the U.S., with about 125 new carbon capture, transportation and storage projects announced starting in 2022. clean air task forcea nonprofit organization focused on solutions to the climate crisis.
The incentives have also led to land grabs in Louisiana and Texas, with companies competing to buy the rights to onshore underground storage, with companies competing to buy the rights to underground reservoirs on land, and from multiple landowners to gain access to a single deep reservoir for carbon storage. land was often acquired.
However, for offshore sites, developers typically only need to deal with a single landowner: the state or federal government.
Global CCS Institute
In August 2023, Castex Carbon Solutions signed a contract with the State of Louisiana for the rights to store carbon underground on 24,000 acres around Monkey Island off the coast of Cameron Parish for an initial cost of $7.25 million. Millions more dollars will flow into the state once the project begins injecting carbon dioxide. Castex is one of the GeoDura hub partners, along with Carbonvert and Enbridge.
The OnStream CO2 collaboration says the hub will have the capacity to store 250 million tonnes of captured carbon, or the annual emissions from 58 million gasoline-powered vehicles. The company has entered into a contract with Commonwealth LNG in Cameron Parish to annually store 9 million tons of carbon that Commonwealth plans to recover from the terminal once it is operational.
Venture Global’s similar contracts with the state to store carbon captured from its Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines LNG facilities on the seabed in Calcasieu Parish and Barataria Bay, respectively, were not very lucrative at first.
The carbon captured from LNG terminals, which super-cool and liquefy natural gas for transportation, accounts for only about 8.8 percent of the carbon emissions produced by the LNG industry, according to Lifecycle. analysis Published by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell University. Howarth’s study, which has come under attack from oil and gas companies and House Republicans, concludes that LNG is worse for the climate than burning coal.
Offshore CCS raises a number of concerns
Onstream says the project is scheduled to be operational in 2028. In addition to completing a geological evaluation of the site, which was funded in part by a Department of Energy grant, the company will need to build a pipeline to move captured carbon away from an industrial site near the lake. There is. Charles, Louisiana and Port Arthur, Texas. It would also need to obtain a permit from the state of Louisiana to inject carbon.
Louisiana is the third state to receive a permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for carbon sequestration wells, and the first with coastline. Patrick Courrèges, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources, said the state will consider ocean carbon sequestration projects the same way it does onshore projects.
“What our people are looking for is to limit the demographics,” he said. “Clay, shale, really thick, impermeable stuff, nothing bubbles up through it. Whether it’s offshore or onshore, what we’re looking at is the subsurface geology.”
He said the state would also consider building wells and pipes to move carbon, adding that offshore wells would also need to be built to deal with hurricanes and storm surges.
Another concern acknowledged by both sides is the possibility of injected carbon coming back from abandoned, idle or old wells. Such concentrated carbon can kill vegetation, marine life, and even fishermen above.
Nettle
OnStream spokesperson Debra James told Floodlight there are no existing wells directly above the storage site.
“Technical assessments have shown that CO2 will not interact with wells near the project area,” she said.
Environmentalists have a number of other concerns, including the potential for drilling and carbon injection to trigger seismic activity in the industrial hotspot. “Not much induced seismic activity is expected,” Meckel told Floodlight.
These advocates also argue that carbon storage under and near coastal wetlands will damage thousands of acres of wetlands along the Louisiana coast, which are already disappearing at a rate of 25 to 35 square miles per year. I am concerned that it may give rise to
“Louisiana is spending millions of dollars to protect the coast in one area, and then allowing massive destruction in another. It’s completely contradictory,” said environmental group Louisiana Bucket. Brigade Director Anne Rolfes said.
Brian Regina, director of planning for the Louisiana Coastal Reclamation and Conservation Authority, said it is the state Department of Energy and Natural Resources’ responsibility to ensure carbon storage along the state’s coastline is done correctly. He added that coastal authorities: $3 billion was delayed A project to support wetland reconstruction in Barataria Bay – I would like to pay attention to its activities.
Technology is largely untested
There are only a handful of undersea carbon sequestration projects operating around the world, and none in the United States.
Two marine carbon storage projects off the coast of Norway are said to have been successful. However, in 2023, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis will study He noted that even in these two projects, which the institute calls some of the most studied offshore waters, carbon storage has come as an unwelcome surprise.
In one of the fields, the carbon unexpectedly moved away from where it was injected, but the carbon remains underground. Injection into the second field had to be stopped as the reservoir reached capacity 15 years earlier than expected.
The study “reveals that storing carbon dioxide underground is not an exact science,” the report said. “Given that there is very limited practical and long-term experience with permanently retaining CO2 underground, it potentially involves even greater risks and uncertainties than drilling for oil and gas.” There is.”
Daldar hasn’t followed the ocean carbon debate closely. But the way he sees it, having more industry in his corner of Louisiana is “absolutely useless.”
