Denbury Carbon Solutions LLC, a Denbury Inc. subsidiary, has executed a 20-year definitive agreement with Lake Charles Methanol (LCM) to provide CO2 transportation and storage services for LCM’s planned blue methanol project, the company said in a release Oct. 27.
LCM’s $4-billion project, to be sited along the Calcasieu River near Lake Charles, La., 10 miles from Denbury’s Green Pipeline, is designed to use Topsoe technology to convert natural gas into hydrogen which will be synthesized into methanol, while incorporating permanent carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
The process is expected to deliver over 500 million kg/year of hydrogen as a feedstock to produce 3.6 million tonnes/year (tpy) of blue methanol, while capturing about 1 million tpy of CO2—the CO2 equivalent of removing emissions of 200,000 cars from the road each year, Denbury said.
CO2 captured by LCM will be transported by Denbury to the Green Pipeline and then to one of multiple planned sequestration sites along Denbury’s Gulf Coast CO2 pipeline network. In association with the project, Denbury plans to construct a pipeline connection from the Lake Charles industrial area to its Green Pipeline. CO2 emissions in the area are currently estimated at 20 million tpy.
LCM has started engineering work and is finalizing major permits to begin construction on the project. A final investment decision is expected in 2023 with first production in 2027.
Construction of the Green Pipeline was completed in 2010. The 320-mile pipeline runs from the end of Denbury’s NEJD pipeline near Donaldsonville, La., westward to Hastings field south of Houston, Tex. Denbury is currently utilizing about 25% of the 16 million tpy CO2 capacity.
