Article originally published on May 1.
Last week, oil and gas company Occidental Petroleum symbolically broke ground on what is said to be the world’s largest direct air capture plant.
The event took place roughly 15 miles southeast of the town of Notrees, Texas, in front of a crowd of 230 people, among which were representatives of the local government, business executives and energy sector leaders.
The groundbreaking ceremony on Friday was led by Oxy President-CEO Vicki Hollub, who introduced the corporation’s plan to build the giant DAC plant on a remote 65-acre site.
To do this, Oxy’s subsidiary 1PointFive will require the work of 1,000 workers, at the end of which, it plans to have the facility in operation as early as by mid-2025.
The project was given the name STRATOS and is worth $1 billion, with an estimated capacity of capturing up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year and the potential to increase that capacity to 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Relevant: Occidental’s Direct Air Capture Plant To Use Siemens Energy Compressors
Once up and running, the new Occidental direct air capture plant will have the capability to dispose of the captured CO2 both via permanent storage in underground saline formations and via utilization, as the carbon can be used to create valuable products.
In a statement regarding the STRATOS DAC plant, Hollub acknowledged the need for companies like Oxy and others in the industry to start investing in direct air capture technology as a means of reducing CO2 emission levels in the atmosphere in order to meet net-zero goals.
“Ten years ago, we started looking at ways to improve the environment and we realized that we could capture CO2 and create low carbon products. We had the groundbreaking tools we needed to do something extraordinary and make a difference around the world,” Hollub said.
Read more: 1PointFive And Carbon Engineering Aiming For Global Expansion
