2023-11-08 10:09:24
BlackRock has a problem with Texas. In this Republican stronghold, the world’s leading financier is seen as a woke company, the ultimate insult. A hatred that has grown stronger over the course of the group’s positions in favor of more responsible practices in social and environmental matters.
Commitments often contested by environmentalists, but which have established its reputation in Houston and Dallas. No wonder then that the leading oil state in the United States does not take this kind of attitude from a company that manages more than 9,000 billion dollars (8,433 billion euros) in assets around the world. .
It may have found a way to get along with the Big Oil cowboys who pride themselves on their boots soiled by the mud of the oil fields of the Permian Basin, America’s largest deposit and also its biggest emitter. of greenhouse gases. BlackRock has just signed a major agreement with the local star in the field, Occidental Petroleum. It will invest $500 million in a plant to directly capture and bury carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It will hold 40% of what promises to be, in 2025, the largest unit in the world in this field. It alone plans to swallow 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Much more than the approximately 36,000 tonnes promised by the world’s only industrial facility in this area, located in Iceland.
A prohibitive cost
Oil companies only see advantages in this carbon capture technology, either in the air or immediately coming out of factory chimneys. The activity is close to their skills and allows them to continue to exploit their oil rather than having to venture into other much less lucrative professions, such as wind or solar power. It could even be a very profitable business for Occidental Petroleum. Firstly because it has already pre-sold carbon credits to companies keen to green their balance sheets, to Airbus for example, but also because this will allow it… to produce more oil. The CO2 buried in the Permian deposits will push the oil remaining there towards the exit.
We understand the ire of environmentalist associations who see it as a ploy to resist the energy transition and the reduction in hydrocarbon production that it implies. Especially since this technology, subsidized by the federal government, has still not proven its effectiveness at the industrial level and its cost is, for the moment, prohibitive compared to the reduction in emissions that it promises.
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