Carbon Management: Reducing Emissions Through CCUS Hubs

FORT WORTH, Texas—With a plan to reduce CO₂ and methane emissions on a global scale, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) is working with policymakers to permanently secure an emissions-free atmosphere through carbon capture hubs.

The OGCI is led by the CEOs of the 12 member companies—Saudi Aramco, BP Plc, Chevron Corp., CNPC, Eni SpA, Equinor ASA, Exxon Mobil Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp., Petrobras, Repsol SA, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE—with the goal of reducing emissions intensity through the “Aiming for Zero” initiative. The idea, according to OGCI’s strategy and policy vice president, Julien Perez, was to create a coalition that can move the needle much faster on reducing methane emissions than any of the individual member companies.

“The objective of the OGCI was to bring together the CEOs of those member companies aligning them on a certain set of membership criteria, and we make those criteria evolving because some of them are targets,” Perez told attendees during an opening keynote at Hart Energy’s Carbon Management Conference on May 16.

The “Aiming for Zero” initiative works to establish an “all-in approach that treats methane emissions as seriously as the oil and gas industry already treats safety” and is “a tangible, ambitious effort to eliminate the industry’s methane footprint by 2030,” Perez shared in his presentation.

“Now, with all the technology available, there's no excuse and there’s no place to hide when it comes to methane emissions,” he added. “And so we want to switch the mindset of the industry and do as good as what this industry has been able to do when it came to safety or all fields, i.e. having a zero tolerance on methane.

“The initiative is an all-in approach where we say that virtually all methane emissions from the industry can and should be avoided.”

Through its three pillars, the OGCI has established a strategy for reaching Scope 1, 2 and 3 goals of lowering intensity by approximately 1 Gt of CO₂ emissions per year, 3 Gt per year and 16 Gt per year respectively.

In 2018, the OGCI’s target in reducing upstream methane intensity was 0.25% and was achieved within the following year. Similarly, 2020’s target of 0.20% was also achieved by the end of 2021. Now, the OGCI’s most recent target is to reach “well below 0.20%” methane intensity by 2025.

To reach these CO₂ and methane targets, the OGCI aims to “kickstart the CCUS industry” through the creation and operation of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) hubs. The hubs will be deployed over 52 countries with the purpose of decarbonizing through CCUS in an economically sustainable manner. Divided into two phases, Phase I will focus on Canada and 27 EU nations, while Phase II will focus on the remaining 24 countries, including Mexico, India, Egypt and Brazil.

“Across the other of 52 countries that we have characterized, we also try to identify what are the right policy mechanism that should be put in place, and it's highly dependent on the local condition and characteristic,” Perez said. “It's not something that you can have one recipe that can apply across the world. And the tool also aims to simplify for project developers, policymakers what the other key information they need to know if they want to start their CCS journey.”