Cox, Crescent Midstream, Repsol US Gulf CCS project gets DOE funding

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has selected a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project off the coast of Louisiana being developed by Repsol SA, Crescent Midstream LLC, Cox Operating LLC, and Carbon Zero US LLC to help demonstrate the feasibility of transporting and permanently storing CO₂ on a commercial scale. The project is expected to hold up to 300 million tonnes of CO₂.

The CCS project will repurpose some of Cox’s offshore assets, consisting of more than 600 wells in 66 fields. Crescent Midstream last year completed initial front-end engineering and design for a 110-mile CO₂ pipeline from Geismar, La., to Grand Isle, repurposing existing Crescent pipeline rights-of-way (OGJ Online, Dec. 27, 2022).

DOE is supporting the project, officially known as the Louisiana Offshore CO₂ Hub Repurposing Infrastructure to Decrease Greenhouse Emissions (Project Lochridge), through its CarbonSAFE program. CarbonSAFE was created to advance projects that help address the technical difficulties related to capturing CO₂ from power plants and other industrial sites or directly from the atmosphere and to increase the number of storage sites progressing toward commercial operation.

Crescent Resource Innovation, the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB), Louisiana State University, and Southern University at Shreveport are also collaborating in Project Lochridge. DOE funding for the project ($8.4 million) is being routed through SSEB, which has also received $2.1 million in Project Lochridge-related funding from non-DOE sources.