World’s biggest carbon capture project on schedule

• 7 years ago (2017-01-11)
• David Flin

Coal 278

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The $1 billion Petra Nova project, the world’s largest CO2 emission capture project from power generation has come into service in the USA, on time and on budget. The project is a joint venture between NRG Energy of the USA and JX Nippon Oil & Gas of Japan, to capture CO2 from 240 MW of power generation, and using the captured gas for oil production.

Petra Nova is intended to capture 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year at the WA Parish coal-fired power plant near Houston, Texas, USA, sending it down a pipeline 80 miles to the West Branch oilfield, jointly owned by NRG, JX, and Hilcorp, the US exploration and production company. The CO2 is pumped into the reservoir to push out more oil. It is estimated that the project is commercially viable when the price of oil is $50-55 per barrel or more.

Robert Watson, former Chief Executive of SaskPower, said that a second project of the same type could be delivered at a cost some 20-30 per cent lower, and that lessons will have been learned that can be applied to future investments.

It has been suggested that scaling up and making incremental improvements could cut the cost of capture to $35 per tonne of CO2, making it “quite competitive with other low carbon options available.”