Natural Gas Plant Comes Clean, CO2 Emissions Reduction Equivalent to 70,000 Cars

Blue Source, a leader in US greenhouse gas emission reduction offsets and developer of carbon capture and storage projects, announced the successful capture of vent stack CO2 flowing from a natural gas processing plant to an enhanced oil recovery site, preventing millions of cubic feet of CO2 from entering the atmosphere every day from this plant at the foothills of the Rocky mountains near La Veta, in South Central Colorado. This reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is equivalent to removing more than 70,000 cars from the road.

Prior to the start of the project, approximately 20 million cubic feet per day of CO2 was vented to the atmosphere. Now those gases will be captured from the vent-stack and travel through pipelines to be sequestered in enhanced oil recovery projects.

In addition, Blue Source has an agreement to sell all of the anthropogenic CO2 and market the related greenhouse gas Verified Emission Reductions (VERs) that will be produced from the project and which are necessary for the payout of the investment.

This project prevents a significant amount of CO2 from venting into the atmosphere and will further help produce a considerable amount of domestic oil in underused oil fields. The project demonstrates that it is indeed possible to reduce CO2 in the environment and create transferable, economic benefits in the form of VERs that will go far in supporting the investment in this project. No additional crude oil is produced as a result of CO2 injection from this project. The crude oil would have been produced anyway from the injection of CO2 sourced from underground CO2 reserves in southern Colorado.

The Blue Lake CO2 Pipeline project began construction in 2005 and is now creating 400,000 tonnes of CO2 emission reductions each year through carbon capture and storage (CCS). It is expected that this captured volume will rise to over 500,000 tonnes per year.

The Apple Tree natural gas processing plant in Huerfano County, Colorado, required a capital investment of approximately $8 million to connect the vent stack carbon dioxide source into a CO2 transportation pipeline. Rather than venting into the atmosphere, the CO2 will now travel 16 miles to join the Sheep Mountain CO2 Pipeline, where it will be used in enhanced oil recovery in the Permian Basin.