Petra Nova

rdf:langString Petra Nova

rdf:langString The Petra Nova project is a coal-energy-sector/clean-energy project designed to reduce carbon emissions from one of the boilers of a coal burning power plant in Thompsons, Texas. It is a multi-million dollar project taken up by NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil to retrofit one of the boilers at their WA Parish Generating Station with a post-combustion carbon capture treatment system to treat a portion of the atmospheric exhaust emissions from the retrofitted boiler. The plant entered commercial service in 1977, and the new carbon emissions reduction system was first put into operation on January 10, 2017. The project is designed to annually capture approximately 33% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) (or 1.6 million tonnes) emissions from the plant's boiler #8. The carbon dioxide gas is captured at 99% purity, and is then compressed and piped about 82 miles to the West Ranch Oil Field, where it is used for enhanced oil recovery. The oil field had previously been producing 300 barrels of oil per day. With the new injection of high pressure carbon dioxide into the field, the oil production of the field was increased by a factor of 50 to 15,000 barrels per day. This project is expected to run for at least another 20 years. To satisfy the Clean Coal Power Initiative requirements, the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology has put a monitoring plan in place to keep track of the injection and movement of the CO2 beneath the surface and in the rock structures at West Ranch. On May 1, 2020, NRG shut down Petra Nova, citing low oil prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due primarily to outages of the host natural gas cogeneration unit, the project missed its carbon sequestration goal by 17% over its first three years of operation.