Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050.
Now we have a better idea why Occidental was keen to pick up the pricey technology: They want to use it to pump more oil.
Previously, the company had said it would use the technology to zero out its climate impact. Yet on Occidental’s earnings call this week, CEO Vicki Hollub changed the tune, saying that injecting CO2 into wells to force out more oil was imperative to boosting oil production.
“Taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is a technology that needs to work for the United States, and President Trump knows the business case for this,” Hollub said. The Verge was the first to report on the comments.
Hollub compared using CO2 in enhanced oil recovery to fracking, the technology that sent U.S. oil and gas production skyrocketing.
But direct air capture, the technique used by Carbon Engineering to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, remains expensive at $600 to $1,000 per metric ton. The Inflation Reduction Act, though, provides some significant incentives for using captured CO2 in enhanced oil recovery, up to $130 per metric ton in 2026 if the gas remains permanently stored underground. That’s not enough to make the practice attractive on its own, but coupled with carbon credit sales, Occidental expects it can turn a profit by the end of the decade.
The Trump administration has been working to dismantle climate-related government incentives, especially the Inflation Reduction Act. But with support from companies like Occidental and ExxonMobil it’s possible that the tax credits could survive.
Carbon capture has a long and tangled history …