[HN Gopher] Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
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Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-07-21 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.semafor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.semafor.com)
| throw0101a wrote:
| Current refrigerants (e.g., R-410) have large global warming
| potentials (GWP) when they inevitably leak into the atmosphere,
| so there's a move to other chemicals. On of the leading
| contenders (at least in the commercial/industrial space) is
| actually CO2 (R-744):
|
| * https://www.hpacmag.com/features/co2-as-a-refrigerant-yesco2...
|
| * https://www.ohio.edu/mechanical/thermo/Applied/Chapt.7_11/Ch...
|
| * https://blog.isa.org/why-co2-is-the-most-promising-refrigera...
|
| * https://plumbingandhvac.ca/co2-refrigeration/
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Refrigerant
|
| CO2 has GWP=1, and just about everything else is higher.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A disadvantage of CO2 as a refrigerant is the operating
| pressure required, much higher than CFC or HFC type
| refrigerants. This is probably not a big issue for industrial
| applications but for home and auto use it will probably affect
| cost and/or reliability.
| ckrapu wrote:
| When I think about carbon extraction and storage, I get the same
| feeling as when I read about the ancients discovering oil seeps
| and surface deposits of hydrocarbons.
|
| They knew that they could be harnessed for keeping fires lit and
| even sometimes associated them with the supernatural. They just
| lacked the tech and industrial background to use them.
|
| We know that carbon is essential for life and if we ever engineer
| useful organisms to build structures or produce macroscale goods
| (as opposed to pharmaceuticals or food), then clearly carbon will
| be one of the main limiting factors, along with energy and water.
| It just feels like we will one day look back at this and think
| "why didn't we just try to use it instead of burying it?"
| IX-103 wrote:
| I don't see how "carbon will be one of the main limiting
| factors". Carbon is abundant in our environment -- it's around
| 0.03% of it and is spread evenly enough that you can always
| find it. It's even relatively common in the universe.
|
| What is hard to find - and has always been hard to find is
| cheap energy. And carbon dioxide is essentially the lowest
| energy state for carbon. It's a dead end as far as energy goes.
| That's why it's a waste product.
|
| If you want to build useful structures then you're still
| subject to thermodynamics, whether you're using "organisms" to
| do it or not. So using graphite or any other form of carbon
| would be a better source of carbon than CO2. The only reason to
| use CO2 is that it is commonly available (which is why plants
| use it).
|
| And again, no one is proposing removing all the CO2, just
| enough to keep us in this little ice age we have been enjoying.
| So there's no reason to worry about running out.
| [deleted]
| juujian wrote:
| They're going to charge us twice. Once for emitting it, second
| time for sequestering it. The fight for subsidies up here in
| Canada is insane. The electricity generated is already more
| expensive then renewables, and soon they can pad their margins
| with novelty projects that may or may not pan out, while telling
| us in their annual reports how great they are.
| collaborative wrote:
| Summary: https://tinyurl.com/22452u66
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The real rationale is a few paragraphs down:
|
| > "For now, Denbury's pipeline network isn't really low carbon,
| but instead will function as an extension of Exxon's normal oil
| business. Today the CO2 carried in the pipelines is used for
| "enhanced oil recovery," a process in which it is injected into
| oil wells to push out the last few drops."
|
| All the DOE-funded 'clean coal' and similar CCS schemes were all
| conveniently set up near end-of-life oilfields, and whatever CO2
| they produced was used to help get the last few barrels out. Of
| course the CO2 is _carrying_ the oil so it 's mostly lost to the
| atmosphere during the processing/refining stage.
|
| Carbon capture and storage from fossil fuels has been nothing but
| a massive fraud; capturing and burying 100% of the carbon from
| coal would take significantly more energy than you can get from
| burning that amount of coal. Notably, data about this key ration
| (energy cost per ton of buried carbon vs. energy cost from
| burning the source fuel) is hidden on the private side of DOE
| public-private partnerships and can't be accessed by the public,
| even by FOIA requests.
|
| CCS is literally one of the biggest scientific frauds perpetrated
| on the public in the history of the DOE.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| "capturing and burying 100% of the carbon"
|
| What about 50%? Does the cost go up as you try to capture a
| larger percentage?
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| From my understanding the cost is in the technology and
| energy required. Essentially, you burn more fossil fuels
| trying to inject it at any level than the carbon you put in.
| And something like this couldn't be run on renewables as is,
| you'd need a rather large amount of batteries which is so
| incredibly expensive at this point in time.
|
| So cost and carbon output make geological sequestration
| impractical. However, when used for "enhanced oil
| extraction", it easily covers the costs and carbon output
| worries. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable, and
| despite the article's claims they are not in the business of
| carbon neutrality.
| lincon127 wrote:
| Carbon Capture from industrial point sources is extremely
| expensive and extremely ineffective. so I doubt that's going to
| be a thing. The only way I could see CC paying off is if big
| companies keep lobbying for government grants and taxpayers money
| to go towards their shite projects so they can abandon them
| halfway through anyway. This'll keep the prospect of "clean
| methods" of operating dirty industries in everyone's brain space
| through political and astroturfed mouthpieces, people will start
| to believe it and oil companies will once again reap the rewards
| of mass confusion
| nukeman wrote:
| It's still a point source, and thus cheaper and easier than
| direct air capture. I don't think it will be as significant as
| some think it will be (we will likely move toward different
| processes for the remaining limited petrochemical production),
| it is likely to still be important for some industries.
| philips wrote:
| It is important to remember how poorly the first experiments in
| carbon transport and storage have gone.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36021530
|
| https://ieefa.org/resources/norways-sleipner-and-snohvit-ccs...
| arbuge wrote:
| Key points:
|
| "Carbon management is becoming increasingly popular with oil
| companies, since it plays to their know-how in trading,
| transporting, and storing molecules (as opposed to electrons from
| renewable energy, which are an entirely different business). ...
| It also allows Exxon to tap one of the most lucrative tax credits
| in the Inflation Reduction Act: $85 per ton of CO2 that is
| permanently stored underground. "
| jokoon wrote:
| oil made those companies rich, but there is no proof that the
| vision of a rich company will have any value or offer an worthy
| insight into the future.
|
| important reminder: CO2 is an oxide and requires A LOT OF ENERGY
| to break down.
|
| so unless they can genetically engineer some kind of moss like in
| Robinson climate trilogy, it's highly doubtful they will achieve
| anything worthwhile
| jansan wrote:
| Stupid question, can't the CO2 just be dissolved in (deep) sea
| water?
| Kye wrote:
| CO2 dissolving into water is killing the ocean as we speak.
| jansan wrote:
| That is just on the surface, right? The mass of CO2 relased
| into the air per year compared to total sea water on earth is
| approx 1/35000. Does is really make such a big difference if
| dissolved in deep sea water?
| Kye wrote:
| We know basically nothing about the ocean other than it's
| where almost all our oxygen comes from, and we have no way
| to know what the tipping point is. Assuming we're too small
| to affect the environment is how we got here.
|
| And we know from effects of climate change above the
| surface that it doesn't have to be cataclysmic to cause
| trouble. There could be all kinds of nasty things in store
| that are even harder to predict with how hard it is to
| explore and study the oceans. We don't even have an
| accurate map of it.
| jansan wrote:
| That sounds like "I just don't want that!". We don't need
| a map to know how dissolved CO2 influences acidity of sea
| water. Trust the science, bro.
| IX-103 wrote:
| "Trust the science, bro."
|
| There is much more involved than how dissolved CO2
| affects ocean acidity. CO2 has a number of other affects
| on both biological and chemical systems that shift
| equilibriums. Understanding how injecting CO2 would
| affect deep ocean ecosystems (and indirectly upper ocean
| layers and climate through layer interchange) when we
| only have a rudimentary understanding of the deep sea
| ecosystem is not a matter of science. It's the realm of
| prophecy and hubris.
|
| I'm not saying that deep-water injections of CO2 are
| dangerous. But that at the current level of science we
| don't even know what we don't know about the possible
| affects that would have. And with the large amounts of
| energy required to sequester and pump carbon dioxide into
| the sea, it would be best if we understood the costs as
| well as the benefits of such an approach before we
| started.
| hannob wrote:
| Yes. I mean, that's happening. Some of the CO2 automatically
| ends up in the ocean, which reduces the burden for the
| atmosphere.
|
| But what you probably meant is if we can artificially increase
| the CO2 dissolved in sea water. The answer is no. The CO2 in
| seawater is relative to the concentration in the atmosphere. If
| you add more to the atmosphere, you add more to the ocean. If
| you remove it from the atmosphere, you reduce the amount in the
| ocean.
| jansan wrote:
| That is only true for sea water near surface. I am talking
| about deeper levels of the ocean. If my calculation is
| correct the mass of CO2 released into the air per year is
| roughtly 1/35000 the mass of all sea water in the oceans.
| Sounds not too concentrated to me.
| jasonhong wrote:
| I'm not an expert in this, but this link from NOAA seems to be
| a definitive explanation. Short answer is yes, but it also
| leads to more ocean acidity, which causes problems for ocean
| life.
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co...
|
| Carbon dioxide, which is naturally in the atmosphere, dissolves
| into seawater. Water and carbon dioxide combine to form
| carbonic acid (H2CO3), a weak acid that breaks (or
| "dissociates") into hydrogen ions (H+) and bicarbonate ions
| (HCO3-).
|
| Because of human-driven increased levels of carbon dioxide in
| the atmosphere, there is more CO2 dissolving into the ocean.
| The ocean's average pH is now around 8.1, which is basic (or
| alkaline), but as the ocean continues to absorb more CO2, the
| pH decreases and the ocean becomes more acidic.
| pfdietz wrote:
| CO2 can be combined with powdered limestone and the result
| mixed with/dissolved in water.
| fwungy wrote:
| Climate Change is the essence of "Intractable Problems".
|
| There is tremendous wealth in oil reserves that is outside the
| control of the G7 countries: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia. There is
| also demand for this oil from non-G7 nations who simply don't
| have the money to go carbon free without descent into starvation,
| poverty and chaos.
|
| Going carbon free on a big enough scale to impact the climate,
| according to existing models, requires getting these petroleum
| reserve holders to give up their massive wealth in exchange for
| little to nothing, and large developing economies to destabilize
| themselves to go carbon neutral.
|
| IT ISN"T GOING TO HAPPEN.
|
| Poor Indians and Chinese aren't going to give up their
| opportunity to secure better lives for themselves for the sake of
| the climate.
|
| We need to be thinking in terms of mitigations and technologies
| that reduce climate impacts while being economically sensible.
|
| Yes, it's not optimal, but choices made in the real world rarely
| are, and as adults we must learn to make them.
| briantakita wrote:
| > Going carbon free on a big enough scale to impact the
| climate, according to existing models, requires getting these
| petroleum reserve holders to give up their massive wealth in
| exchange for little to nothing, and large developing economies
| to destabilize themselves to go carbon neutral.
|
| The climate will continue to change even if humanity goes
| carbon free. When it comes to climate, the only constant is
| change.
|
| > Poor Indians and Chinese aren't going to give up their
| opportunity to secure better lives for themselves for the sake
| of the climate.
|
| Or fall for the NeoColonialist trap of paying taxes to
| financial markets to "save the world". Instead, the producer
| nations will leverage their positions as commodities become
| more valuable.
| hannob wrote:
| It's nonsense like this that makes a more rational debate around
| carbon capture difficult.
|
| Yes, CCS will likely have to play some role in a future
| decarbonized society, e.g. for cement production. But it's not a
| plausible lifeline for fossil fuel companies. The vast bulk of
| emission reductions need to come from phasing down fossil fuel
| use, and that is fundamentally incompatible with their business
| model.
|
| (shameless self plug: I tried to write down my view on the whole
| CCS issue recently: https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/can-
| ccs-escape-from... )
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Isn't it more likely to be water (and probably more like fresh
| water ) ?
|
| It's hard to desalinate already and we have been more and more
| heat and droughts that keep on being said they are of the century
| or historic and those words are losing their meaning
| luhn wrote:
| > Exxon's vision is that eventually these pipelines will ferry
| CO2 captured from industrial point sources like cement and steel
| plants, and potentially from natural gas power plants, and
| transport it to underground rock formations or old oil wells
| where it could be buried (Denbury also owns a number of large
| sites for carbon sequestration).
|
| Color me skeptical. The article offers no supporting evidence
| that this is Exxon's "vision", and then hits us with this:
|
| > For now, Denbury's pipeline network isn't really low carbon,
| but instead will function as an extension of Exxon's normal oil
| business. Today the CO2 carried in the pipelines is used for
| "enhanced oil recovery," a process in which it is injected into
| oil wells to push out the last few drops.
|
| Sounds like they made the acquisition for their current fossil
| fuel business, not a bet that "carbon will be the new oil."
|
| And as a cherry on top:
|
| > The company plans to double the size of its liquefied natural
| gas business by 2030, an executive said this week, with a focus
| on buyers in Asia.
| briantakita wrote:
| It looks like Exxon is pivoting to be an energy provider &
| owner of piping infrastructure, with petroleum products being a
| product line. The CO2 pipelines seem similar in infrastructure
| to oil pipelines. CO2 looks like a great opportunity for
| companies like Exxon to further consolidate the energy markets
| & gain entry into the heavily subsidized Carbon Capture market.
| They will gain tax funded & printed revenue as well as more
| pipeline infrastructure.
|
| On the PR front, Exxon is now a "Green Company" who is "saving
| the world from Climate Change". Their ESG score will rise which
| will attract additional investment in public markets.
|
| I wonder how many Carbon Offset credits this will yield them.
| Will this make Exxon a "Carbon Neutral Company"? An interesting
| mix of finance justified by environmentalism & a case example
| of what happens when environmentalism is reduced to a single
| metric. Well played Exxon, well played...
| tim333 wrote:
| Along those lines there was an interesting article on 'white
| hydrogen' the other day. Apparently there are vast quantities
| of hydrogen underground which could be drilled for and piped
| in a manner similar to natural gas. https://archive.ph/3c7Hs
| toss1 wrote:
| I also seriously question the concept of massive investment in
| CO2 dumping/sequestration alone, as it seems more likely that
| CO2 will be used as a feedstock to generate more complex and
| useful molecules.
|
| That said, the endpoints of the pipelines could just route to
| processing plants instead of underground carbon sinks, so the
| pipeline part could be valid, if appropriately structured.
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| It sounds more like an excuse to continue to output oil while
| doing absolutely nothing to stop the further degradation of out
| environment.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Funny but Exxon could become a 'net zero' company without
| fundamentally changing its business.
|
| You see, companies get charged for the carbon they emit, not
| the carbon that their customers emit.
|
| An oil refinery is an ideal place to implement carbon capture
| because it is a concentrated source of emissions and is
| already using technology such as amine strippers that one
| would use for carbon capture. Refineries burn a lot of fuel
| to produce hydrogen and process heat and those could be
| replaced with green hydrogen or pink hydrogen, heat could be
| derived from resistive heating, nuclear HTGR or adiabatic
| compression in turbines. What CO2 is produced can be pumped
| underground into saline aquifers.
|
| The Biden administration is interested in subsidizing such
| development in the 'Refinery Row" of the U.S. South and it is
| something they are equipped to succeed at because they have
| the geology, industrial concentration, skills and attitude to
| pull it off.
|
| A net-zero Exxon would still have to decarbonize production
| and that is harder than the refinery but they could buy some
| offsets (or themselves implement with direct carbon capture,
| BECCS, etc.) It would be a lot cheaper than buying offsets
| for their customers but who knows they might sell those too.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The idea of Exxon becoming "net zero" is a howler and we
| can't let them get away with it.
|
| We need to price the carbon emissions at the source. If
| they want to pass on the external carbon _costs_ to their
| customers, so be it.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Stop making destruction of the ecosystem an economic
| externality? What's next, pricing human rights abuses to
| prevent US companies from profiting off of foreign slave
| labor?
| dathos wrote:
| I think you fail to realize how the profitability of this
| industry subsidizes a lot of issues that look to be
| crisises on their own. Plastics being too cheap to make
| so we don't really do recycling or reducing to name one.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why would Exxon need an excuse?
| jimlongton wrote:
| Related: Revealed: Exxon made 'breathtakingly' accurate
| climate predictions in 1970s and 80s
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-
| clima...
| azinman2 wrote:
| It shouldn't be a surprise. They're an oil and gas company,
| with gigantic investments in that space, a culture that
| supports it, knowledge to do it, politics solved for it, and
| a crap ton of inertia.
|
| The expectation that they'd pivot is far less likely than
| likely. This isn't a sector known for disruption outside of
| new ways to extract.
| fwungy wrote:
| Private oil companies like Exxon are only about 10% of oil
| production. The biggies are the state oil companies, on
| which state wealth depends. They aren't going to give that
| up.
| csnover wrote:
| The insane thing about this is to me that Exxon _did_ seem
| to have ideas about pivoting away from oil and gas in the
| 1970s[0]. They funded research that brought down the cost
| of solar panels five-fold and started manufacturing and
| selling their own panels[1], they developed the lithium-ion
| battery[2], and they created subsidiaries for servicing the
| nuclear power industry[3], among other things.
|
| I've never understood the obstructionist position of these
| oil execs. If you want to make a shitload of money, why
| _not_ push for development of some emerging industry like
| renewables where all the infrastructure has to be built up
| from nothing? That could be money _you_ are getting paid to
| build it. Instead, now it's money going to some other
| company.
|
| [0] https://www.desmog.com/s1ep1-bell-labs-energy/
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/763844598/how-big-oil-
| of-the-...
|
| [2] https://www.bupipedream.com/news/49390/prof-
| whittingham/
|
| [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/14/archives/exxons-
| innovativ...
| brmgb wrote:
| It's not an either/or situation. Most of the Big Oil
| companies have significant investments in renewable
| power. It's just that oil is insanely profitable, to a
| point which is hard to grasp so it dwarfs whatever else
| they do.
| teddyh wrote:
| The first digital camera was (AFAIK) made by Kodak. The
| modern desktop computer was largely invented by Xerox.
| Both companies failed to follow through.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Too little, too late by the fox guarding the henhouse.
|
| I hope government subsidies and the insurance industry bitch slap
| manufacturing and petrochem to drive rapid deployment of
| substantial projects involving oceanic bio-GMO CCS at scale
| because they won't by so-called "invisible hand" market forces
| alone until billions are on the move, hypercanes are obliterating
| continents, and waves are lapping at the NYSE building. It's an
| emergency, and delay, half-measures, and planting trees isn't
| going to cut it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I feel like this title is the definition of "anti-clickbait" to
| me (i.e. I don't even want to read the article because of the
| title), because it makes no sense.
|
| Oil is primarily an energy _source_. When we talk about "carbon"
| in the context of climate change we're usually talking about
| carbon dioxide, which is a _byproduct_ of energy generation that
| itself contains no consumable energy. Saying "carbon will be the
| new oil" is like saying my poop will be my new food source - it
| just doesn't make sense.
| xNeil wrote:
| To be honest, I think "poop will be my new food source" makes
| perfect sense. But that might just be me.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Remind me to pass on any of your dinner parties...
| [deleted]
| formulathree wrote:
| Get paid for selling oil for people to burn.
|
| Get paid for capturing carbon from burned oil.
|
| It's not exactly in conflict with their current business model.
| geonaut wrote:
| "ExxonMobil... [acquired]... a smaller Texas oil and gas company
| with the U.S.'s largest network of pipelines designed to carry
| carbon dioxide."
|
| There was a great episode of the Volts podcast, about a startup
| aiming to make synthetic shipping fuel (methanol), where waste
| CO2 was one of the main inputs.
|
| Some good discussion of where they sourced their CO2, and the
| practicalities of CO2 distribution.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/volts/id1548554104?i=1...
| coffeeshopgoth wrote:
| Exxon is a behemoth that spreads its money over everything just
| to catch something - and even that is done poorly over there.
| They do have a number of legacy fields that if not already on CO2
| flooding, may become candidates in their eyes soon. But that is
| where "being done poorly" comes in again. CO2 flooding, like
| water flooding, should start sooner than later to catch a certain
| pressure and oil/water amount/quality regime in the reservoir.
| Guaranteed, they will try to make it look like they are being
| sustainable by showing off how they are using the CO2, recycling
| it and, at some point, sequestering it, but it will be done in
| the most inefficient manner possible and probably result in
| losing a good amount of CO2 to the atmosphere due to poor field
| oversight of the equipment. Challenges that will come up due to
| whatever stage a reservoir might be in:
| https://www.mdpi.com/energies/energies-10-00345/article_depl...
| ttonkytonk wrote:
| Asking Exxon to take action to prevent global warming is like
| asking the foxes to guard the hen house:
|
| https://tz.linkedin.com/posts/alisheridan_assessing-exxonmob...
| kdamica wrote:
| I would bet that this is not going to happen unless someone finds
| an industrial use for all that carbon. I'm not an expert but it
| seems like it would be much more efficient to invest in low
| carbon energy and manufacturing tech than to build a ton of
| infrastructure for sequestration.
| ckrapu wrote:
| If the story of Earth were a novel and the current chapter
| introduced both global warming and the advent of carbon-based
| manufacturing, it would almost feel too contrived of a setup.
| notJim wrote:
| The issue is that some things are difficult to decarbonize
| because they emit carbon directly due to chemical processes or
| use gas for process heat. There is a lot of investigation into
| whether these can be decarbonized economically, but a lot of it
| is still fairly early stages. It makes sense to have a variety
| of solutions available, especially for the short term.
| [deleted]
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