A New Kind of Pipeline…for CO2?

[Pipelines aren’t just for fos­sil fuels any­more. ‑Ed.]

- by Rus­sell Hub­bard, April 12, 2014. Source: Oma­ha World-Herald 

A Wyoming oil com­pa­ny told Nebras­ka ethanol pro­duc­ers Fri­day that a $1 bil­lion car­bon diox­ide pipeline across the state would mean up to $50 mil­lion a year in new rev­enue for them.

Scott Hor­nafius, pres­i­dent of Elk Petro­le­um, said such a pipeline would buy some or all of the CO2 pro­duced by the state’s 24 ethanol plants and ship it to Wyoming, where it is need­ed for injec­tion into oil wells. The CO2 helps drillers extract almost as much oil as the ini­tial strike, about 17 per­cent of the well’s total.

For now, the CO2 pipeline is just a dream, with­out finan­cial back­ers or coop­er­at­ing ethanol plants. But Hor­nafius said the state’s ethanol plants pro­duce about 5 mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 a year as a nat­ur­al byprod­uct of the process. Iowa, with 42 ethanol plants, should also be part of the pipeline, Hor­nafius said.

“It is an enor­mous­ly under­uti­lized resource,” said Hor­nafius, speak­ing to peo­ple gath­ered for the Nebras­ka Ethanol Board’s 2014 con­fer­ence in the Mag­no­lia Hotel in Omaha.

The pro­pos­al envi­sions an under­ground pipeline stretch­ing more than 1,000 miles through the Iowa/Nebraska ethanol trail. It would start in about the mid­dle of Iowa, near the bor­der with Illi­nois, mov­ing across cen­tral Iowa. It would enter Nebras­ka at Oma­ha, then jog south for most of its Corn­husker jour­ney before head­ing north into Wyoming.

Hor­nafius said it is not unrea­son­able for the project to get under­way in three years. He said major financ­ing would have to emerge, prob­a­bly from the large oil pro­duc­ers oper­at­ing in Wyoming.

Then there is the gain­ing of rights of way from landown­ers and the oth­er legal con­cerns, fol­lowed by a one-year con­struc­tion phase at a cost of $1 mil­lion per mile.

The pipeline would be will­ing to pay about $10 a met­ric ton for the CO2, Hor­nafius said.

“It is a phe­nom­e­nal idea, very cre­ative, just the sort of thing we need,” said con­fer­ence attendee Brett Fre­vert, chief finan­cial offi­cer of Coun­cil Bluffs ethanol pro­duc­er South­east Iowa Renew­able Ener­gy. “But it is a long way from feasibility.”

More than a dozen such pipelines are already oper­at­ing, bypass­ing Nebras­ka, but run­ning in a crooked line from Texas to North Dako­ta, many of them sourc­ing CO2 from nat­ur­al deposits. There is also one orig­i­nat­ing in Mis­sis­sip­pi. Some have been around for decades. There has nev­er been a leak, Hor­nafius said, oth­er than from con­struc­tion equip­ment dig­ging where it wasn’t sup­posed to.

Even if there was, it wouldn’t mean much, he said. While CO2 is con­sid­ered a harm­ful green­house gas, it is nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring, exhaled by every liv­ing organism.

Hor­nafius said the injec­tion of CO2 into oil wells is an old idea. He said the gas stim­u­lates oil to move around and give itself up for extrac­tion after all oth­er meth­ods have failed. “It is almost as good as a new well,” he said.

Oil pro­duc­ers, he said, will look warm­ly upon the idea for anoth­er rea­son: Cal­i­for­nia has a low-car­bon fuel stan­dard that requires ener­gy com­pa­nies to reduce the car­bon pro­file of the fuels they sell in the state. Oil pro­duced via CO2 injec­tion counts toward the goal, because more CO2 remains trapped under­ground than is giv­en off by the fuel pro­duced with it. There are sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial incen­tives for oil producers.

“Basi­cal­ly, it is sold in Cal­i­for­nia for a pre­mi­um price,” Hor­nafius said. “That pre­mi­um price in turn pays for the pipeline.”

Todd Sneller, admin­is­tra­tor of the Nebras­ka Ethanol Board, said the CO2 idea is just one of many cir­cu­lat­ing on how to use corn and its byprod­ucts in nov­el ways. “The CO2 pipeline is an inter­est­ing com­po­nent,” he said. “The whole idea is to cap­ture addi­tion­al value.”