ExxonMobil announced the completion of an expansion to the world’s largest carbon dioxide capture plant near LaBarge, Wyoming, USA. The expanded plant will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the captured CO2 is sold to companies for enhanced oil recovery in the United States.
The $86 million expansion includes the installation of compressors to capture 50 % more CO2 for potential use in enhanced oil recovery and other industrial uses. Enhanced oil recovery involves the injection of carbon dioxide into reservoirs to produce additional oil and gas. The CO2 for this project is captured from the natural gas streams produced from fields in Wyoming. The gas streams contain significant amounts of CO2 and other components that are removed at the LaBarge processing plant.
With the expansion, the plant has the capacity to capture approximately 365 million cubic feet per day of CO2 from the gas streams – equivalent to the amount emitted by more than 1.5 million cars.
- ExxonMobil, USA
It sounds like the net result will be the release of the CO2 into the atmosphere. If what they mean by “enhanced oil recovery” (or gas), the CO2 injected into drills during a “fracking” or other such process will eventually reach the atmosphere. The atmosphere ignores the economics gains of one company getting tax credits for removing generated CO2, then selling it to another company (or subsidiary) that will release it in a process that the EPA was forced to exempt from pollution controls.