Denbury and Lapis Energy Form JV to Develop CO2 Sequestration Project in St. Charles Parish
Denbury Inc. announced that it has formed a joint venture with Lapis Energy, LP to design, implement, and operate a carbon dioxide sequestration project at Lapis Energy’s 14,000-acre site located in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, approximately 20 miles west of New Orleans.
Each party will have a 50 percent interest in a newly formed project company, Libra CO2 Storage Solutions LLC. The joint venture partners believe that the site has the potential to store at least 200 million metric tons of CO2 and, due to its close proximity to industrial facilities, has the potential to become an ideal sequestration site. The site is anticipated to be ready for first injection as early as 2027. Depending on the scale and pace of emissions agreements dedicated to the site, Denbury intends to connect the sequestration site to its existing CO2 pipeline network in southeast Louisiana with a 45-mile pipeline connection.
Denbury Secures Additional CO2 Sequestration Site in St. Helena Parish
The company also announced a definitive agreement with Soterra LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Greif, Inc., for the right to develop a dedicated CO2 sequestration site on approximately 8,500 acres in St. Helena Parish, approximately 50 miles northeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and less than five miles from the company’s NEJD CO2 pipeline. Denbury estimates potential CO2 sequestration capacity of the site (named Virgo) to be at least 100 million metric tons and anticipates the site could be ready for first CO2 injection as early as 2026.
Nik Wood, Denbury’s Senior Vice President, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage, commented, “We are excited to announce two new dedicated CO2 sequestration sites which expand our storage offering in southeastern Louisiana. Our joint venture with Lapis provides access to an ideal site that is extremely well positioned in a high-emissions area along the Mississippi River between Donaldsonville and New Orleans, and we are excited to work with the Lapis team. The potential extension of our pipeline system towards New Orleans would provide significant capacity and flexibility to the Denbury CO2 pipeline network. Our Virgo site is also an ideal CO2 sequestration site, as it is located a very short distance from our existing infrastructure. Adding both of these sites furthers our strategy to provide the industry’s largest, most reliable, and efficient CO2 transportation and storage network.”
With the addition of the two sites, the company’s total CO2 sequestration portfolio has expanded to 10 sites, including sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Wyoming, and a total potential storage volume of approximately 2 billion metric tons of CO2. In June 2023, Denbury was informed by the Environmental Protection Agency that it had deemed the Company’s Class VI storage permits (up to 6 CO2 injection wells) over the Leo site in Mississippi “technically complete”. As part of its Class VI permitting program and to advance efforts to provide CO2 sequestration by the end of 2025, the company plans to submit Class VI permits to the EPA covering 2 to 3 additional dedicated sequestration sites this year. In addition, Denbury intends to drill 2 to 3 additional stratigraphic test wells across its portfolio by the end of 2023.
