ExxonMobil Floats $100 Billion Carbon Storage Project

ExxonMobil on Monday floated a proposal for a public-private carbon storage project that would collect planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. petrochemical plants and bury them in reservoirs under the Gulf of Mexico.

The plan would require “$100 billion or more” from companies and government agencies to store 50 million metric tons of CO2 by 2030 with capacity potentially doubling by 2040, Joe Blommaert, president of Exxon’s Low Carbon Solutions business said in an interview.

Blommaert outlined the plan in a blog post on Monday, about two months after the largest U.S. oil producer formed a Low Carbon Solutions business unit to profit from selling carbon-reduction technology and services.

The project proposed for the Houston Ship Channel, home to dozens of refineries and chemical plants, faces enormous hurdles, including financing and support from federal, state and local government agencies. It comes as Exxon faces shareholder opposition to its goal of increasing fossil fuel production in coming years that would greatly expand its carbon emissions.

Houston was chosen because it has a large concentration of “hard-to-decarbonize” industry near the Gulf, said Blommaert.

“We could create an economy of scale where we can reduce the cost of the carbon dioxide mitigation, create jobs and reduce the emissions,” he said.

(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller; Editing by Chris Reese and Sam Holmes)