Eneos Holdings will take full ownership of Petra Nova Parish Holdings, the operator of the Petra Nova carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project, aimed at harnessing 1.6 MtCO2/year of emissions from the 3.6 GW W.A. Parish power plant in Texas (United States), operated by NRG Energy.
Under the agreement, JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration, a division of Eneos that owns 50% of Petra Nova, will purchase the remaining 50% of the project from NRG Energy for US$3.6m. The Petra Nova project, which has been suspended since 2020, is equipped to capture and separate 1.6 MtCO2/year of CO2 from the flue gas of the power plant and inject it into oilfields.
Since the start of its commercial operation in December 2016, the facility has injected about 4MtCO2. In 2020, NRG Energy mothballed the facility as low oil prices rendered the project unprofitable. The project's profitability depended deeply on demand for CO2 from the oil sector and as oil production and prices suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, so did the facility. The power plant remains operational despite the closure of the CCUS project.