Talos Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding with EnLink Midstream to jointly develop a complete CO2 capture, transportation, and sequestration solution for industrial-scale emitters in Louisiana. The joint service offering will be focused on the Mississippi River corridor from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and will use significant portions of EnLink’s existing regional pipeline infrastructure of approximately 4,000 miles in Louisiana.
The partners will also use Talos’s newly acquired River Bend CCS site in eastern Louisiana, which includes 26,000 acres of pore space and provides sequestration capacity of more than 500 million metric tonnes in the area. EnLink and Talos have begun to market the offering to potential customers.
The River Bend lease includes acreage spread across Iberville, St. James, Assumption, and Lafourche parishes. The acreage comprises three strategically located sites along the Mississippi River industrial corridor known collectively as the River Bend CCS project. Talos and EnLink believe the area provides a superior geologic fairway containing a 3,000-plus-ft- thick saline aquifer column with porosity and permeabilities ideal for sequestration activities. River Bend will be Talos’s first CCS project in Louisiana and joins the two previously announced projects in Texas —Freeport LNG and Jefferson County.
Additionally, Talos has also secured a right of first refusal on approximately 63,000 additional acres in the area for phased, future expansion in order to meet expected future market demand. Talos will be the project manager and operator of the injection, storage, and monitoring and will be joined by its partner, Storegga Limited.
“EnLink owns the last-mile pipe to most industrial emission sources in the region and will complement Talos's expertise in conventional geology, subsurface characterization, and track record of responsible operations,” said Timothy Duncan, president and chief executive at Talos. “We are excited to collaborate to provide a one-stop solution that will lead to a simpler pricing model and, ultimately, accelerated decarbonization in a key industrial emissions region."
EnLink has identified existing pipelines for CO2 transportation from emissions sources in the Geismar, Donaldsonville, Plaquemine, and St. Charles areas. The existing pipeline infrastructure reduces the environmental impacts compared to new pipeline construction in environmentally sensitive areas. Due to optionality and redundancy in EnLink’s large pipeline network in the region, EnLink does not anticipate a material impact to its existing natural gas business from the repurposing of identified pipelines to CO2 service.
Eastern Louisiana emits approximately 80 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year, according to Talos. The Mississippi River corridor alone accounts for nearly two-thirds of the total industrial emissions in Louisiana. The emitting sources include ammonia, hydrogen, methanol, base chemical facilities, refinery, and other petrochemical facilities.
