Beaumont may see new carbon sequestration project soon
Courtney Pedersen | July 31, 2024 (Beaumont Enterprise) –
Beaumont could soon see a carbon sequestration project on land owned by the city.
Caliche in late May announced the company is "administratively complete" in the Environmental Protection Agency's first phase of the permitting process. The company hopes to build a carbon dioxide sequestration facility in Jefferson County.
"We are very excited to have submitted our Class VI permit application and to have passed the initial Administrative Completeness Review stage," Caliche's Director of Energy Transition Graham Payne said in a news release. "We’ve spent the last several months gathering historical data, building models, running simulations and writing."
Payne said the project is now in the technical review phase. While the technical review can last about last between 18 and 24 months, the EPA told the company it can anticipate a response by May 2026.
"We have about 2,500 acres of land that we lease from the city of Beaumont," Payne said. "We are planning on injecting 2 million tons (of carbon dioxide) a year, for hopefully 12 years, for a total of 24 million metric tons."
Caliche Public Relations and Marketing Consultant Emily Walsh said the land that Caliche has leased from the city of Beaumont for the sequestration project is about 4 miles west of the company's existing Golden Triangle Storage site at Spindletop.
Once the Caliche Beaumont Sequestration Project is officially open, Payne said Caliche will receive the carbon dioxide through a pipeline from large CO2 emitters in the area. The carbon dioxide will be in a supercritical fluid state, meaning its highly compressed and contains properties of both gases and liquids.
"There are a lot of industries in Beaumont, Port Arthur that create a lot of CO2 from the different chemical operations, refining operations," Payne said. "So, we'll get that, and then we will inject it into this very permeable and porous formation called the Frio Sandstone in Jefferson County."
Carbon sequestration limits the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to prevent future impacts from climate change. Payne said the process has been used for the past few decades.
According to the World Resources Institute in November 2023, carbon capture, utilization and sequestration captured around 0.1% of global emissions, which is around 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
"Some countries are moving ahead with CCUS deployment, while others are skeptical of its use," a report from the Institute states. "Some nongovernment organizations and other stakeholders oppose CCUS, arguing that it creates a moral hazard and that it’s only a Band-Aid over what they see as the real problem: ending use of fuels. They point to a mixed record of success, high costs and disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities among reasons to not rely on the technology."