According to Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), her company "got to where we are today" because of the partnerships they were able to develop around the world.
Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum.
"Without the national oil company partners that we've had, there's no way we would be as successful as we are. It's so important for us to partner," Hollub said. "In fact, we trademarked the phrase 'partner of choice' because it is important to us to not only be a service provider, but to be a partner with national oil companies to develop strategy, set direction and help them achieve their goals - not just to deliver a product."
Additionally, Hollub said her team believes that in order to make partnerships work best, there has to be respect, alignment, trust and transparency among the partners.
"With those attributes in the partnerships we've had internationally, we've been able to do incredible things," she said at the 23rd World Petroleum Congress.
Hollub said Oxy has technologies "that are critical to making our company help lead the effort to advance the capture of CO2 from the atmosphere."
For example, atmospheric CO2 can be used in either equivalent single layer recovery reservoirs and sequestration, or it can also be used to generate products, Hollub explained.
"Regarding products, we've invested in a technology that is able to convert CO2 to bioethylene in the lab. Since [Oxy] has a chemicals business, ethylene is really important and the technology needs to be further advanced, so we're going to build a pilot plant to do that."
The conversion process is one that "is not very well understood" yet by those outside of the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, Hollub said.
"Until it is, we're going to miss a huge opportunity to generate oil that produces products for the hard-to-decarbonize industries like aviation and maritime, so we're trying to help the world understand that," she said. "Because if you use the atmospheric CO2 and enhanced oil-recovery projects, you can generate a net-zero-carbon barrel of oil. That product can then produce zero-carbon jet fuel, diesel and/or other products, so it's really important we advance this technology."
Progress in Permian Basin
Hollub also pointed to Oxy's development company 1PointFive's plans to build a first-of-its-kind direct-air-capture facility with technology licensed from Carbon Engineering, a Canadian startup. The technology pulls CO2 directly from the air, with the potential to be deployed globally.
"This technology is going to be so unique and so important, but I don't think it will advance at the pace that it needs to without very, very strong partnerships," Hollub said. "We're going to put this facility in the Permian Basin where we have our processing plants and our pipeline infrastructure in place. The good thing about direct air capture is that it can be put anywhere in the world -- at the source of emissions or the source of the CO2. It's critically important to have that flexibility, because the atmosphere balances over time. There's a lot more flexibility than when you have to retrofit a facility, because it eliminates the need for pipelines."
When fully operational, this facility is expected to remove 1 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year, with the captured CO2 being safely sequestered.
The facility will utilize Oxy's extensive CO2 infrastructure, engineering experience and OxyChem's potassium hydroxide and polyvinylchloride products. The front-end engineering design for the facility is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022, with construction beginning later in the year. Operational startup will then commence in late 2024.
While the Biden administration has undeniably taken some hits from industry leaders regarding policy and regulatory issues, Hollub noted that she believes the administration supports carbon capture.
"It's critical to address that carbon capture is not just retrofitting industry, but it also is direct air capture," Hollub said. "The first direct air capture that's of the scale that we're going to build in the Permian Basin will be the largest in the world."
