EXXONMOBIL INKS CCS DEAL WITH US STEEL MAKER

ExxonMobil has signed a carbon capture and storage, or CSS, agreement with Nucor Cooperation, one of North America’s largest steel producers.

The deal calls on the U.S. energy major to design, permit, install and operate facilities to capture up to 800,000 tonnes per year of CO 2 from Nucor’s manufacturing site in Convent, Louisiana.

The plant produces direct reduced iron, a raw material used to make high-quality steel products such as automobiles, appliances and heavy equipment. The CCS project with Nucor is led by ExxonMobil’s Low Carbon Solutions business and is slated to start up in mid-2026.

The project supports Louisiana’s 2050 net zero emissions targets.

“Our agreement with Nucor is the latest example of how our Low Carbon Solutions business is scaling up CCS to help reduce emissions from steel and other hard-to-decarbonize industries, which currently account for about 80 percent of global energy-related CO 2 emissions,” ExxonMobil said.

“It’s also a milestone for our Low Carbon Solutions business: It brings the total amount of CO 2 we’ve agreed to transport and store for our CCS customers to more than 5 million tonnes a year – equivalent to replacing approximately 2 million gasoline-powered cars with EVs.”

ExxonMobil has already inked CCS agreements this year with industrial gases company Linde and fertilizer producer CF Industries.

CCS is tipped to be a major source of cargo-carrying opportunities for breakbulk and project cargo in the coming years. The technique is deployed in power plants and other industrial facilities to trap and compress CO 2 before transporting it to special sites for underground or subsea storage. Large-scale CCS projects such as Convent will require breakbulk support to carry and position pipelines, storage tanks, giant compressors, processing equipment, ship-handling facilities and other oversized components. According to the London-based Energy Industries Council, or EIC, more than 200 carbon capture developments have been announced since 2020. The U.S. boasts the highest number of projects, followed by the UK, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands and Indonesia.

Global spending on new projects scheduled for start-up before 2026 is estimated at US$48 billion, the EIC said.

ExxonMobil is a member of the Breakbulk Global Shipper Network , an extensive networking platform for executives operating at the top end of the project supply chain in sectors such as oil and gas, energy and renewables, mining and minerals, construction, forestry, industrial manufacturing and aerospace.