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Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#42> Exxon’s vision is that eventually these pipelines will ferry CO2 captured from industrial point sources like cement and steel plants, and potentially from natural gas power plants, and transport it to underground rock formations or old oil wells where it could be buried (Denbury also owns a number of large sites for carbon sequestration). Color me skeptical. The article offers no supporting evidence that this is Ex…
It sounds more like an excuse to continue to output oil while doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out environment.
Why would Exxon need an excuse?
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is just on the surface, right? The mass of CO2 relased into the air per year compared to total sea water on earth is approx 1/35000. Does is really make such a big difference if dissolved in deep sea water?
We know basically nothing about the ocean other than it's where almost all our oxygen comes from, and we have no way to know what the tipping point is. Assuming we're too small to affect the environment is how we got here. And we know from effects of climate change above the surface that it doesn't have to be cataclysmic to cause trouble. There could be all kinds of nasty things in store that are even harder to predi…
That sounds like "I just don't want that!". We don't need a map to know how dissolved CO2 influences acidity of sea water. Trust the science, bro.
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#44Stupid question, can't the CO2 just be dissolved in (deep) sea water?
I'm not an expert in this, but this link from NOAA seems to be a definitive explanation. Short answer is yes, but it also leads to more ocean acidity, which causes problems for ocean life. https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co... Carbon dioxide, which is naturally in the atmosphere, dissolves into seawater. Water and carbon dioxide combine to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), a weak acid that breaks…
CO2 can be combined with powdered limestone and the result mixed with/dissolved in water.
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds more like an excuse to continue to output oil while doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out environment.
Funny but Exxon could become a ‘net zero’ company without fundamentally changing its business. You see, companies get charged for the carbon they emit, not the carbon that their customers emit. An oil refinery is an ideal place to implement carbon capture because it is a concentrated source of emissions and is already using technology such as amine strippers that one would use for carbon capture. Refineries burn a lo…
The idea of Exxon becoming “net zero” is a howler and we can’t let them get away with it.
We need to price the carbon emissions at the source. If they want to pass on the external carbon costs to their customers, so be it.
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#46Stupid question, can't the CO2 just be dissolved in (deep) sea water?
Yes. I mean, that's happening. Some of the CO2 automatically ends up in the ocean, which reduces the burden for the atmosphere.
But what you probably meant is if we can artificially increase the CO2 dissolved in sea water. The answer is no. The CO2 in seawater is relative to the concentration in the atmosphere. If you add more to the atmosphere, you add more to the ocean. If you remove it from the atmosphere, you reduce the amount in the ocean.
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#47Exxon is a behemoth that spreads its money over everything just to catch something - and even that is done poorly over there. They do have a number of legacy fields that if not already on CO2 flooding, may become candidates in their eyes soon. But that is where "being done poorly" comes in again. CO2 flooding, like water flooding, should start sooner than later to catch a certain pressure and oil/water
amount/quality regime in the reservoir. Guaranteed, they will try to make it look like they are being sustainable by showing off how they are using the CO2, recycling it and, at some point, sequestering it, but it will be done in the most inefficient manner possible and probably result in losing a good amount of CO2 to the atmosphere due to poor field oversight of the equipment. Challenges that will come up due to whatever stage a reservoir might be in: https://www.mdpi.com/energies/energies-10-00345/article_depl...
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny but Exxon could become a ‘net zero’ company without fundamentally changing its business. You see, companies get charged for the carbon they emit, not the carbon that their customers emit. An oil refinery is an ideal place to implement carbon capture because it is a concentrated source of emissions and is already using technology such as amine strippers that one would use for carbon capture. Refineries burn a lo…
The idea of Exxon becoming “net zero” is a howler and we can’t let them get away with it. We need to price the carbon emissions at the source. If they want to pass on the external carbon costs to their customers, so be it.
Stop making destruction of the ecosystem an economic externality? What's next, pricing human rights abuses to prevent US companies from profiting off of foreign slave labor?
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#49Stupid question, can't the CO2 just be dissolved in (deep) sea water?
Yes. I mean, that's happening. Some of the CO2 automatically ends up in the ocean, which reduces the burden for the atmosphere. But what you probably meant is if we can artificially increase the CO2 dissolved in sea water. The answer is no. The CO2 in seawater is relative to the concentration in the atmosphere. If you add more to the atmosphere, you add more to the ocean. If you remove it from the atmosphere, you red…
That is only true for sea water near surface. I am talking about deeper levels of the ocean. If my calculation is correct the mass of CO2 released into the air per year is roughtly 1/35000 the mass of all sea water in the oceans. Sounds not too concentrated to me.
Re: Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
#50Carbon Capture from industrial point sources is extremely expensive and extremely ineffective. so I doubt that's going to be a thing. The only way I could see CC paying off is if big companies keep lobbying for government grants and taxpayers money to go towards their shite projects so they can abandon them halfway through anyway. This'll keep the prospect of "clean methods" of operating dirty industries in everyone'…
It’s still a point source, and thus cheaper and easier than direct air capture. I don’t think it will be as significant as some think it will be (we will likely move toward different processes for the remaining limited petrochemical production), it is likely to still be important for some industries.