The US oil and gas pipeline industry is looking for new opportunities to lay steel in the ground with pipes that carry the carbon dioxide produced when fossil fuels are burnt.
The midstream energy sector has clashed with climate campaigners who oppose pipeline projects as infrastructure that locks in greenhouse gas emissions. Wall Street is pushing the industry to show how it will adapt to demands for a lower-carbon world.
In response, pipeline operators are pointing to their potential as a link in carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems, in which C02 emissions are trapped in underground reservoirs where they can be kept out of the atmosphere. Pipelines would move C02 from industrial flues to the reservoirs.
“It’s hard to see how climate objectives are met without pretty widespread carbon capture and sequestration,” Steven Kean, chief executive of Kinder Morgan, one of the largest US pipeline companies, recently told analysts. “We think we’ve got the expertise on the pipeline side of it.”
The US already has about 5,150 miles (8,300km) of C02 pipelines. The network is tiny compared to the national web of oil and gas pipes, but it is the largest in the world.
They are mostly clustered around the Permian Basin oilfields of west Texas, where C02 is injected into wells to squeeze out stubborn crude oil deposits. Revenue derives from selling the gas and claiming a federal tax credit worth $35 for each tonne of carbon put underground.
But future growth hinges on far more widespread deployment.
would funnel C02 exhaust from emitters such as power plants