Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
5/10/13
A planned petroleum coke-to-chemicals gasification plant in Louisiana that would be outfitted with carbon capture and storage technology through a stimulus-funded Department of Energy program would have “minor adverse” to “beneficial” impacts on the surrounding environment, the Department concluded this week. In a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) released May 10, DOE found that that Leucadia Energy’s Lake Charles CCS project could have “minor adverse” impacts on nearby soils, surface water, biological resources, land use, noise levels and traffic conditions during construction and operations, as well as a less severe, “negligible” impact on climate and air quality and groundwater during that time. “As with the development of any large industrial project, the construction and operation of the Lake Charles CCS project, including the CO2 capture facility, associated infrastructure and pipelines, and injection and monitoring wells, would impact the surrounding environment,” the draft EIS concludes. “The project could have beneficial impacts to regional socioeconomics and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The draft EIS and its eventual final iteration will help inform DOE’s decision on whether to provide a $261 million cost-share grant for the CCS portion of the project, which will capture 4.6 million tonnes of CO2 per year from a new-build pet coke gasification facility near the Port of Lake Charles, La. That carbon would then be transported to Denbury Resource’s pre-existing Green Pipeline, which would carry the CO2 to the company’s Hastings oil field south of Houston for enhanced oil recovery operations. That depleted field is currently storing CO2 being captured from two steam methane reformers at Air Products and Chemicals’ DOE-funded hydrogen production-capture facility in Port Arthur, Texas. The draft EIS clarifies that both projects will split CO2 monitoring, verification and accounting duties at the storage site. A Lake Charles project official told GHG Monitor late last year that he expects Leucadia to declare financial close on the $2.5 billion industrial chemicals facility in 2013. However, Leucadia has kept most project details close to the vest during its developmental phase.
The Lake Charles project is one of three large-scale industrial capture demonstration projects being funding with $700 million in stimulus dollars from DOE’s Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ICCS) program. That program was the subject of a recent DOE Inspector General audit earlier this year, which concluded that officials overseeing the program may have “not always effectively managed” the projects receiving stimulus funding from the scheme.
