Denbury plans two new Gulf Coast CCS sites

US independent producer Denbury said December 13 it was planning a pair of potential carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) sites in Mississippi and Louisiana that would take its potential storage capabilities in the US Gulf Coast region to about 2bn metric tons.

In Mississippi, it has reached an agreement with forestry products company Weyerhaeuser to develop about 16,000 acres of pore space owned by Weyerhaeuser that could store 275mn mt of CO₂. And in Louisiana, it has signed a definitive agreement with a large landholder for the future development of a 31,000-acre site that has the potential to store up to 250mn mt of CO₂.

The Mississippi site is directly adjacent to Denbury’s NEJD Pipeline, some 35 miles south of its Jackson Dome field. It is Denbury’s first proposed sequestration site in Mississippi, expanding a portfolio that already includes sites along the US Gulf Coast in Alabama, Texas and Louisiana.

The Louisiana site, which spans parts of Allen, Beauregard and Vernon Parishes, is about 25 miles north of Denbury’s Green Pipeline and provides potential storage solutions for heavy industrial emitters in Beaumont and Port Arthur, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana. In close proximity to the sequestration site is more than 60mn mt/yr of existing emissions.

“We now have the pathways to move industrial-sourced CO₂ from the Mississippi River Industrial corridor north on our NEJD pipeline, west on our Green Pipeline, and east to our previously announced planned storage in southeast Louisiana,” said Nik Wood, Denbury’s senior vice president, CCUS.

Denbury has been actively transporting and utilising liquid CO₂ in its enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations for more than two decades and has built a network of more than 1,300 miles of dedicated CO₂ pipelines, representing about 25% of all the CO₂ pipelines in the US. It has stored an estimated 225mn mt of CO₂ in its EOR operations.

With strategic pipeline extensions and the addition of additional storage sites, it estimates it can expand its Gulf Coast CO₂ network capacity to more than 150mn mt/yr. It currently has agreements to transport and store 20mn mt/yr of CO₂ but estimates its capabilities will grow to 30-40mn mt/yr by 2028 and to 50-70mn mt/yr by 2030.