California Resources Corporation and Brookfield have started CO2 injections at Carbon TerraVault I in Kern County. The project captures carbon from a cryogenic gas plant and stores it in depleted oil and gas reservoirs over a mile underground. The first reservoir, 26R, is the first in the state to receive EPA Class VI permits and can store up to 1.46 million metric tons of CO2 annually. CRC has applied for eight additional permits to expand total storage capacity to 352 million metric tons.
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First operational CCS project in California is finally live. CRC is using depleted reservoirs at Elk Hills to store CO2 from their gas plant. It is a start, but the scale of the overall climate goal makes this look small.
The real story here is the Class VI permit. Getting those from the EPA is usually a nightmare. If they have a streamlined path for these eight other reservoirs, that is where the actual scaling happens.
Storage potential is 38 million tons, but what is the actual capture rate today? I want to see the daily tonnage being injected before we call this a scalable industry. Also, how does the energy penalty of the capture plant affect the site efficiency?
Using depleted oil fields is a smart move for the geology, but the maintenance on those old wells can be a headache. I wonder if the leakage monitoring costs will eat into the margins over the next decade.
Brookfield is involved in the joint venture, which suggests this is being treated as a serious infrastructure play rather than just a corporate social responsibility project.
