Petra Nova

The Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project is a commercial-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage system retrofitted onto Unit 8 of the W.A. Parish Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant near Thompsons, Texas. The project uses an amine-based absorption process (Kansai Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery Process) to capture CO₂ from a 240 MW slipstream of flue gas, compress it, and transport it about 81 miles via pipeline to the West Ranch Oil Field, where the CO₂ is injected for enhanced oil recovery and subsurface storage. The system was initially designed to capture approximately 1.4 million metric tons of CO₂ per year at over 90 percent capture efficiency. The Petra Nova CCS facility entered commercial service in January 2017 with cost-share support from the U.S. Department of Energy (about $190 million) under the Clean Coal Power Initiative. Operational challenges and low oil prices led to a shutdown in May 2020, but the carbon capture facility was restarted on September 5, 2023, under new ownership by JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation, continuing CO₂ capture operations as one of the largest power-plant-linked CCS systems in the world