Occidental to build network of CO2 pipelines in southeast Texas

Occidental has selected Enterprise Products Partners to develop new CO2 pipelines in southeast Texas to support its ongoing carbon capture hub in the region and other third parties, the companies said Oct. 28.

Enterprise will develop a new pipeline network in southeast Texas that will “transport CO2 emissions captured by third parties at facilities in the vicinity of the Houston Ship Channel,” Occidental’s 1PointFive carbon capture and storage company said in a statement. The CO2 pipelines will be “co-located” with existing infrastructure and send carbon to 1PointFive’s carbon sequestration hub.

The announcement did not specify which third parties in the Houston area would be supplying captured carbon. Occidental said a variety of methods for capturing CO2 will be used, but "point source capture is likely to be the primary method," a representative said in an email.

The US Department of Energy will provide $500 million to 1PointFive as part of its developing 500,000 mt of carbon/year South Texas Direct Air Capture Hub project, 1PointFive announced Sept. 12.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, last assessed the price of carbon credits generated by various tech-based capture facilities including direct air capture at $145 per metric tons of carbon on Oct. 28.

Carbon-removal tracking website CDR.fyi listed a spot price for DAC carbon credits at $470/mtc on Oct. 28.

1PointFive has delivered 100 mtc captured through its DAC and has sold 1.3 million mtc to date, according to the CDR.fyi data. The latest significant sale of credits was 500,000 mtc to Microsoft in July this year.

The DOE earlier this month proposed a carbon management strategy that suggests deploying CO2 removal technology for "priority use cases," particularly those with little or no alternative way of reducing emissions