(The Center Square) – ExxonMobil has begun transporting and storing carbon dioxide produced at an ammonia manufacturing complex in Louisiana and plans to expand the company’s low carbon solutions business on the Gulf Coast.
In December, the Houston-based company began using an existing pipeline to move up to 2 million metric tons of carbon produced annually at the CF Industries plant near Baton Rouge for burial about 7,500 feet underground at the company’s Rose Carbon Capture and Storage Hub in east Texas.
In October, the Environmental Protection Agency granted ExxonMobil the permit needed to inject carbon dioxide underground at the Rose Hub, which the company intends to use as a permanent storage center for carbon captured at industrial plants along its Gulf Coast pipeline network.
In 2026, ExxonMobil plans to start up three more carbon capture and sequestration projects in Louisiana, said Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of the company’s Low Carbon Solutions business unit, in an online post.
“In a time where energy demand is enormous and decarbonization goals are on the global clock, ExxonMobil’s Low Carbon Solutions business is taking big steps to expand and strengthen our CCS operations along the U.S. Gulf Coast – one of the world’s most crucial hubs for energy production and heavy industry,” said Genetti.
The company’s activities in carbon capture and storage span multiple industries including ammonia, natural gas processing, industrial gases and steel production, Genetti said in a post published Monday on ExxonMobil’s website.
In 2026, ExxonMobil is scheduled to begin transporting and storing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually at the New Generation Gas Gathering natural gas processing plant in Louisiana.
The partnership between Momentum Midstream and ExxonMobil represents the first large-scale carbon capture and storage agreement with a natural gas processor. It allows Momentum to sell “certified” or low-carbon natural gas by removing carbon during construction, a feature important to buyers in Europe and parts of Asia.
Through federal tax credits, developers of projects like the Rose Hub and the CF Industries carbon sequestration earn $85 per metric ton of carbon dioxide stored. For more expensive technologies that extract carbon dioxide directly from the sky, the credit jumps to $180 per metric ton.
In the second half of 2026, ExxonMobil will begin capturing, transporting and sequestering a total of 3 million metric tons of carbon produced by two customers: Nucor, which produces steel at a facility near Baton Rouge, and Linde, a processor of industrial gases with a plant in Bayton, Texas.
ExxonMobil signed carbon dioxide service contracts in 2025 with AtmosClear, a bioenergy producer located near Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles Methanol II, both of which are expected to begin operations in 2027. In total, ExxonMobil’s low carbon solutions business has contracted with six customers to capture, transport and store approximately 9 million tons per year of carbon dioxide.Genetti said ExxonMobil expects to reach a final investment decision by the end of the year on the company’s first Low Carbon Data Center. He said demand for data is growing exponentially and ExxonMobil is uniquely able to address it with a low-carbon solution using natural gas to generate power along with carbon dioxide capture and sequestration.Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said in December the company would cut capital spending on low-carbon projects over the next five years from $30 billion to $20 billion, citing a lack of “committed customers” willing to pay the premium for low-carbon products like blue hydrogen and biofuels. As part of the spending cut, ExxonMobil indefinitely paused a $7 billion blue hydrogen plant the company was planning to build in Baytown, Texas.Woods said ExxonMobil would reallocate $10 billion over the next five years from low-carbon projects to more profitable core assets in the Permian Basin, in Guyana, and to liquefied natural gas.Critics of carbon capture and storage contend companies like ExxonMobil use it to justify continuing oil and gas production instead of phasing it out, and they say that it is prohibitively expensive without government subsidies.
