Houston-based Occidental Petroleum last week outlined its plans to build the world’s largest direct air carbon capture facility in Permian Basin. Construction is scheduled to begin during second half of 2022, and operations are expected to begin at DAC1 in late 2024. Oxy officials said March 23 they plan to invest up to six percent – $275 million of up to $4.3 billion – of its capital expenditures on low carbon ventures in fiscal year 2022. Oxy green investment unit Oxy Low Carbon Ventures will manage this first project with Oxy’s 1PointFive platform. The direct air capture plant will be connected to Oxy’s existing CO2 pipelines and CO2-flood EOR operations to create a network capable of removing 500,000 tonnes of carbon per year initially with expansion to one million tonnes per year.
Richard Jackson, Oxy’s president of U.S. onshore resources and carbon management and operations, said global engineering firm Worley is nearing completion of the facility’s front-end engineering and design.