Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, subsidiary of Occidental, and Rusheen Capital Management said Aug. 19 they have formed a development company to finance and deploy Carbon Engineering’s large-scale direct air capture (DAC) technology in Permian Basin. The new company, 1PointFive, and Canadian company Carbon Engineering signed an agreement for commerical development of the world’s largest DAC facility. Mission of 1PointFive is “to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using Carbon Engineering’s DAC technology.”
Richard Jackson, chair of 1PointFive and president of Oxy subsidiary, said the facility will remove “substantial volumes of carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere” – up to 1 million metric tons of atmospheric CO2 a year. Engineering and design is in progress; construction is expected to start in 2022 at an undisclosed location of 100 acres in Permian Basin. CO2 will be stored underground, and some of it will be used for EOR.
Finally a solution that makes sense. Carbon based energy is the life’s blood of the worlds economies hence forced reduction with no alternative (solar has ridiculously low efficiency, wind is erratic at best and Nuclear is just unpopular) makes no sense. One of your plants is equivalent to 40 million trees which is very impressive. Out of all the proposed solutions (Hydrogen, Atmospheric seeding, Ocean alterations, etc.) this one is the easiest to implement throughout the world as all the others are global risks. Carbon capture reverses the carbon based energy output. You can’t get any more simple than that. I am just disappointed that more oil companies have not come on board with this. They need to be more a part of the solution as Occidental has.