Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil has signed a deal to transport and store up to two million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide from energy company Calpine’s Baytown natural gas-powered energy centre and carbon capture facility in Texas.
Calpine is the largest producer of electricity derived from natural gas in the US. The company’s Baytown project is expected to produce around 500 megawatts of electricity a year for Texas customers. The plant will also supply steam to nearby industrial facilities.
There are no timelines for the Calpine Baytown site yet, but a front-end engineering design study, as well as permitting and development, is underway.
Captured CO2 from Calpine’s Baytown facility will feed into ExxonMobil’s Gulf Coast pipeline system, which was expanded with its $4.9bn purchase of US hydrocarbons business Denbury in November 2023.
Calpine is ExxonMobil’s sixth CCS customer and takes the company’s total amount of CO2 under contract to 16 million tonnes a year, though its capability at Baytown is not realised. CO2 storage should come onstream in 2027 or 2028.
Caleb Stephenson, Executive Vice-President of Calpine, said the news was an important milestone.
“We believe CCS is an actionable and cost-effective way to meet customers’ demand for reliable power and alleviate concerns about … gas-fired facilities.”
Stephenson said the company is “on the brink” of commercialising CCS technology to make possible the future supply of CO2 to ExxonMobil.
“[Federal government] support has allowed us to expand our investments in power infrastructure, including our recently acquired Quail Run Energy Centre in the Permian and additional generation and storage projects across the country.”
