Under the new agreement, Whiting will purchase 80 million cubic feet (80,000 Mcf/d) of compressed CO₂ per day from TCEP—representing approximately 60% of TCEP’s total volume of captured CO₂—during the first five years of TCEP’s operation, with gradually declining amounts and an option to extend the purchases thereafter. In the Permian Basin, approximately one additional barrel of oil can be recovered for each 6,000 cubic feet (6 Mcf) of compressed CO₂ injected into the oil field. TCEP will begin delivering CO₂ to Whiting when the plant commences operations in late 2014 or early 2015; construction is scheduled to begin at the end of this year.

This is another important milestone for the Texas Clean Energy Project, coming on the heels of last month’s power purchase announcement with CPS Energy in San Antonio. We now have sales commitments in place for all three of TCEP’s main commercial products—electric power, urea for fertilizer, and CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery—and that is obviously key to getting this project underway.

—Donald Hodel, Chairman of Summit Power

CO₂ for EOR operations in the Permian Basin and elsewhere have generally been carried out with CO₂ that is geological in origin—i.e., formed naturally in underground reservoirs in New Mexico and Colorado and brought to the surface by wells such as those used to produce natural gas. More than 3,000 miles of CO₂-dedicated pipeline currently transports and distributes geologic CO₂ throughout the Permian Basin.

Whiting will be the first in the Permian to purchase CO₂ from a power project that will be produced through the coal-gasification process. TCEP received a $450 million award in 2010 from the US Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), the Department’s effort to create a new generation of energy processes that sharply reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants and reduce America’s dependence on imported energy resources. (Earlier post.)

In oil fields such as Whiting’s, the injected CO₂ mixes with the oil that is left behind in the primary oil-well production and the secondary water-injection stage. Approximately 40% of the initially injected CO₂ remains trapped underground. The remainder comes to the surface with the oil, but is then recaptured, recompressed, and re-injected. Ultimately, some 99% of the injected CO₂ can be permanently stored (i.e. geologically sequestered) deep underground many thousands of feet below the water table, with no leakage to the atmosphere.

We are extremely pleased to be the first oil producer in West Texas to start using manmade CO₂ from coal for enhanced oil recovery. This shift from geologic to manmade CO₂ in the oil fields is a significant step forward for both the power industry and the oil industry.

—Whiting CEO James Volker

The TCEP

The TCEP integrates coal gasification, combined-cycle power generation, CO₂ capture, and urea production. Siemens is the primary equipment provider for TCEP’s gasifiers, power island and controls, including a “twin pack” of SFG-500 gasifiers, a SGT6-5000F combustion turbine, and an advanced SPPA-T3000 control system. The project’s front end engineering design (FEED) study was launched in June 2010 by Fluor, Siemens and Selas Fluid Processing Corporation, a Linde Group subsidiary. The project is supported by H.B. 469, Texas legislation enacted in 2009 to promote carbon capture power projects with low emissions.

Coal gasification, syngas processing and CO₂ capture. Pulverized coal feedstock will be introduced into the two Siemens gasifiers along with limited amounts of nearly pure O₂ gas and converted into syngas comprising H₂ and CO, varying amounts of CO₂, nitrogen (N₂), sulfur species, methane, volatilized metals, and PM. The syngas will be cooled and cleaned of PM.

Next, the syngas flows through a water-gas shift reactor, in which steam is injected in the syngas over a catalyst bed, initiating a reaction where the CO in the syngas would be converted to CO₂ and the steam would be converted to additional H₂ in the syngas stream. This provides a syngas stream that is concentrated in both CO₂ and H₂.

Subsequently, the syngas would pass through a mercury removal system and then an acid gas removal system where first the sulfur species would be removed, then the CO₂, creating a clean, H₂-rich concentration syngas upon exiting the acid gas removal unit.

Captured CO2 will be further cleaned and compressed, and then transported by pipeline to an existing regional CO₂ pipeline or, potentially, to a nearby EOR field. A portion of the captured CO₂ will also be used to produce urea. The H₂-rich syngas stream will be split, with part used to produce electricity via the turbine and the other part be used to produce urea for fertilizer.

Argon and H₂SO₄ are by-products of the gasification process and would be made available for commercial sale. Inert slag, another by-product of the gasification process, would be sold for manufacturing and construction uses or disposed of off-site.

The H₂-rich, low-CO₂ syngas will be combusted in a turbine generator to produce electricity. Combustion of the H₂-rich fuel gas will produce water vapor and a low-CO₂ exhaust gas with significantly lower CO₂ emissions than would occur if the coal itself, or the raw syngas, had been combusted.

The exhaust gas would be ducted through an HRSG (heat recovery steam generator), which would generate high-temperature, high-pressure steam. This steam would be piped into a steam turbine-generator, which would generate additional electricity. This integration of the combustion turbine-generator, HRSG, and steam turbine-generator is known as a combined-cycle power plant.

The combined power generation from the combustion turbine-generator and the steam turbine generator would be approximately 400 MW (gross) with 213 MW sent to the grid, on average, and the remainder being used to run the plant’s equipment. The electricity sold would be transmitted to the regional electrical grid by a high voltage transmission line system. Natural gas would be used to start up the polygen plant and as a backup fuel (natural gas would also be used during operations to heat drying gases, supply an auxiliary boiler, and provide burner pilot flames such as for flares).

With two Siemens gasifiers, the TCEP will produce more syngas than can be used for electricity production. The additional syngas produced will be converted to NH₃ using the Haber process. In that process, the H₂ in the syngas is reacted with N₂ from the air separation unit, forming NH₃. Downstream, the NH₃ is reacted with a portion of the CO₂ from a syngas cleanup system, thereby forming urea in a Bosch-Meiser process. The urea is produced as a granular product common in the fertilizer industry.

TCEP will be located at one of the former FutureGen finalist sites—the 600-acre Penwell site—situated fifteen miles west of Odessa, Texas. An environmental impact statement (EIS) is currently being prepared for the US Department of Energy (DOE). TCEP received its air quality permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on December 28, 2010—a major milestone that is the key state governmental approval that is required to move the project forward to be privately financed and built. The permit was issued administratively since the draft permit received no opposition or requests for a hearing.

TCEP is currently scheduled to achieve financial closing and commence construction in Fall 2011. Commercial operation is scheduled for late 2014. The project will begin sequestering carbon during start-up and testing in 2014.

Summit, a power developer based in Seattle, WA, and Blue Strategies, a Houston-based developer of physical CO₂ projects, partnered in October 2009 to market TCEP’s 2.5 million tons per year of CO₂ to oil producers in the West Texas Permian Basin.

This is the first of several CO₂ off-take agreements with TCEP, and we are pleased to have negotiated this historic first one with a company that has a long and successful history of doing enhanced oil recovery in the Permian.

—Blue Strategies Executive Vice President Russell Martin

Whiting Petroleum Corporation is an independent oil and gas company that acquires, develops and explores for crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids primarily in the Permian Basin, Rocky Mountains, Mid-Continent, Gulf Coast and Michigan regions of the United States. The company’s largest projects are in the Bakken and Three Forks plays in North Dakota and its Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) projects, which have historically used naturally occurring geological CO₂ for injection in its EOR projects in Oklahoma and Texas.

Summit Power Group has developed large, low-carbon energy projects with more than 7,000 megawatts of electric power plants in operation, representing more $7 billion in investment, and more than 2,000 megawatts in development or under construction.

Blue Strategies is a leading developer of CO₂ projects involving the capture, compression and transportation of CO₂. In addition, Blue Strategies works very closely with private and governmental agencies to develop procedures around assuring injected CO₂ remains sequestered in the reservoir and meets the requirements for carbon offset registries. The management team has more than 100 years of experience in managing physical CO₂.

Resources

• Texas Clean Energy Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0444D)