Denbury adds new sequestration sites in Louisiana

US CO₂ storage leader Denbury said June 27 it had formed a joint venture with Lapis Energy to develop a CO₂ sequestration project on Lapis Energy’s 14,000-acre site in St Charles Parish, Louisiana, about 20 miles west of New Orleans.

The new joint venture company, Libra CO₂ Storage Solutions, will develop the site, which Denbury estimates has the potential to store “at least” 200mn tonnes of CO₂, with injections expected to begin as early as 2027. Depending on the scale and pace of emissions agreements, Denbury would connect the site to its existing CO₂ pipeline network in southeast Louisiana with a 45-mile pipeline connection.

“Our joint venture with Lapis provides access to an ideal site that is extremely well positioned in a high-emissions area along the Mississippi River between Donaldsonville and New Orleans, and we are excited to work with the Lapis team,” said Nik Wood, senior vice president at Denbury. “The potential extension of our pipeline system towards New Orleans would provide significant capacity and flexibility to the Denbury CO₂ pipeline network.”

Denbury also said it had entered into a definitive agreement with Soterra LLC, a subsidiary of Greif Inc, to develop a dedicated CO₂ storage site on 8,500 acres in St Helena Parish, about 50 miles northeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The site, named Virgo, is less than five miles from Denbury’s NEJD CO₂ pipeline, and has the potential to sequester “at least” 100mn tonnes of CO₂. Injections could begin as early as 2026.

“Our Virgo site is also an ideal CO₂ sequestration site, as it is located a very short distance from our existing infrastructure,” Wood said. “Adding both of these sites furthers our strategy to provide the industry’s largest, most reliable, and efficient CO₂ transportation and storage network.”

With the two new sites, Denbury’s CO₂ sequestration portfolio has increased to 10 sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Wyoming, with a total potential storage capacity of some 2bn tonnes of CO₂.

Earlier this month, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deemed “technically complete” Denbury’s Class VI storage permits at up to six CO₂ injection wells at its Leo site in Mississippi. It intends to submit Class VI permit applications to the EPA later this year covering two to three additional sites and will drill two or three stratigraphic test wells across its portfolio by the end of this year.

Denbury currently injects more than 4mn tonnes/year of captured industrial-sourced CO₂.