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Carbon capture startup pivots to selling CO2 for enhanced oil recovery
Spiritus says injecting captured CO2 could unlock an additional 70 million barrels of oil across Texas, the Rockies, and the Midwest.
A climate-focused startup is shifting part of its carbon capture business toward selling captured CO2 to U.S. oil and gas producers for enhanced oil recovery, after changes to U.S. federal incentives and an uncertain regulatory outlook reduced support for carbon capture projects.
OilPrice reports that carbon management engineering company Spiritus has signed preliminary agreements with three U.S. oil and gas producers to sell the captured CO2 for EOR. The company says the injected CO2 could help unlock an additional 70 million barrels of oil from wells in Texas, the Rockies, and the Midwest, according to remarks from Spiritus CEO Charles Cadieu in an interview published Wednesday.
The outlet links the pivot to a broader deterioration in the economics of carbon removal, including insufficient government backing and high project costs. OilPrice also notes that the Trump administration removed many projects from funding and that major carbon credit buyers, including technology firms, scaled back purchases as they shifted investment priorities.
OilPrice adds that 137 billion barrels of U.S. oil are technically recoverable using CO2-enhanced oil recovery, with Texas and the U.S. Gulf Coast accounting for more than half. It says Spiritus is among companies that have responded to the challenging carbon removal market by pivoting from carbon capture and storage toward supplying CO2 to boost production.