Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
4/24/2015
The United States should support the expansion of existing CO2 pipeline infrastructure to increase opportunities for both carbon capture and storage and enhanced oil recovery, according to the Department of Energy’s first Quadrennial Energy Review, released this week. Currently, the United States is home to the majority of a 4,500-mile CO2 pipeline network consisting of 50 individual pipelines, spanning more than 12 states and a portion of Canada. That network would have to expand significantly to meet the goals of the QER’s low-carbon scenario. “Construction through 2030 would more than triple the size of current U.S. CO2 pipeline infrastructure through an average annual build rate of nearly 1,000 miles per year,” the document states.
The QER makes two recommendations to support that level of expansion in the future. First, the document says, DOE should “work with states to promote best practices for siting and regulating CO2 pipelines.” In improving how CO2 pipelines are sited, improvements can also be made in the overall safety of projects and environmental protections. “Several states have made substantial progress on this front and provide potential models for other states,” the document says.
The document’s second recommendation is for the government to “enact financial incentives for the construction of CO2 pipeline networks.” The document says, “Expanding and improving CO2 pipeline infrastructure could enable GHG reductions through carbon capture, utilization, and storage, while promoting domestic oil production through EOR. Providing incentives such as grants or tax incentives will spur activity to link low-cost CO2 from industrial sources to nearby oil fields and saline storage formations.”
Expansion needed to support CO2 capture
Currently, the document explains, the vast majority of CO2 pipeline infrastructure in the United States is used to connect natural sources of CO2 to oil fields for use in EOR. However, in order to support the deployment of carbon capture technologies, the pipeline must be extended to facilitate the addition of anthropogenic CO2 tie-ins for use in EOR or for geologic storage. “In 2014, roughly 1,250 billion cubic feet of CO2 (or 68 million metric tons) flowed through U.S. pipelines—roughly 80 percent of which is from natural (geologic) sources. In the next few years, several new industrial CO2 -capture facilities are expected to bring online another 1,100 billion cubic feet of CO2, with nearly 600 miles of new pipeline by 2020. At that point, the portion of CO2 from industrial sources would nearly exceed that from natural sources,” the document says.
