Strategic Biofuels announced that its Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Test Well Program was successfully completed at the company’s Louisiana Green Fuels Project (LGF) in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana. LGF is the first renewable diesel fuel project to achieve this milestone.

The goals of the test well program were to demonstrate that CO₂, the main greenhouse gas that will be generated during the fuel production process, can be safely and securely stored deep underground and that the storage reservoir has sufficient capacity to store all the gas produced over the plant’s lifetime. Completing the test well program is an essential pre-requisite for securing the permit for the EPA Class VI sequestration well.

Carbon capture and permanent geologic sequestration is no longer a hypothetical scenario for Louisiana Green Fuels—successful completion of the test well is a major milestone that’s not been achieved by any other renewable diesel project.

These results enable us to move forward knowing that combining CCS with conversion of sustainable forestry waste to renewable diesel at our project site will enable us to achieve our deeply negative carbon footprint goal. Deep carbon negativity greatly increases the potential carbon credit revenues from our fuel and vastly improves the project’s returns. What’s set us apart from other developers was recognizing that the de-risking we could achieve with the test well more than justified the multi-million-dollar expenditure for the program at this early stage.

—Dr. Paul Schubert, Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Biofuels

The design and execution of the test well program was developed by Chief Operating Officer Bob Meredith with help from Geostock Sandia, an international consulting firm that has worked with the Department of Energy on carbon sequestration wells for almost two decades. The program used oil field workers and traditional oilfield equipment to advance this green energy project.

The Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF) plant will convert waste materials from managed forests into renewable diesel fuel and renewable naphtha using gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The plant is expected to produce about 83% renewable diesel and 17% renewable naphtha. Once completed, the Louisiana Green Fuels Plant is expected to produce approximately 32 million gallons of renewable fuels per year.

The diesel fuel qualifies for substantial Carbon Credits under the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard Program (RFS) and under the California Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS).