Summit’s Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP), dubbed a “NowGen” plant by national environmental group the Clean Air Task Force, will be a new 400MW coal gasification plant that begins construction in 2010. It is an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) project located in Penwell about 15 miles west of Odessa, Texas.
The related carbon capture and storage (CCS) efforts, which Blue Source will manage, will focus on meeting the demand for sources of CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in West Texas’ Permian Basin.
CO2 for EOR operations boosts oil production while allowing permanent sequestration of CO2 from the atmosphere. The project’s location will also allow the alternative CCS technique of CO2 injection into deep saline formations, if national carbon policies ultimately favor that technique.
In CCS projects, carbon dioxide is captured and stored instead of being released into the atmosphere. In EOR, the captured CO2 is transported and permanently sequestered in mature oil fields, with the benefit of producing additional supplies of crude oil. In deep saline injection operations, the CO2 is stored in deeper geological formations containing brines. TCEP’s capture rate is expected to facilitate the capture of nearly three millions tons of carbon dioxide annually.
As reported, TCEP’s capture of annual CO2 emissions is a step forward in the national and international movement toward sequestration of carbon dioxide from industrial and power sources.
Under the agreement, Blue Source will market both TCEP’s captured CO2 and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Blue Source will oversee the monitoring and verification of the geological sequestration of the project’ CO2 in Texas’s Permian Basin oil fields.
Summit and Blue Source expect to sell all of TCEP’s captured CO2 over the 30-year life of the plant.
Russell Martin, executive vice-president of Blue Source, said: “We believe this project – and its ability to capture 90% of its carbon emissions – has enormous national and global significance.
“This project has significant potential as a model in the voluntary emissions reduction market. We anticipate tremendous demand from oil producers to purchase the captured CO2, and we are confident of our ability to sell it all. We will, of course, preserve other CCS options as well.”
Summit recently applied for a Clean Coal Power Initiative Round 3 grant from the US Department of Energy. TCEP will be a privately owned and conventionally project-financed facility that produces marketable commodities including electricity, CO2, sulfuric acid, non-leachable slag, and other derivatives of TCEP-produced synthesis gas, including ammonia/urea.
