Strategic Biofuels
Mar 20, 20233 min
Strategic Biofuels announced March 16 that it has completed the filing of its Class VI Carbon Sequestration Well Permit Application with U.S. EPA and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
The Class VI application fully integrated the extensive data collected during the 2021 drilling and testing of the company’s Louisiana Green Fuels Class V stratigraphic test well, thorough geological and geophysical mapping of the region, and state-of-the-art reservoir, geomechanical, and plume-expansion modeling.
“Rigorous subsurface research, data collection, and advanced engineering and software modeling have demonstrated that we can safely and permanently sequester all of the carbon dioxide generated during renewable fuel and green-power production at our Louisiana Green Fuels project in Caldwell Parish,” said Bob Meredith, chief operating officer for Strategic Biofuels. “Completing this application for the EPA Class VI permit accomplishes another major milestone for our Project. The application is massive, and its submission is the culmination of nearly two years of relentless dedication of our outstanding LGF project team of experts and that of our valued partners at Geostock Sandia.”
EPA has confirmed receipt of the completed application and that its review is underway.
Once the application is approved, the project will move forward with the drilling of three injection wells and several reservoir-monitoring wells.
Simultaneously, construction of the renewable diesel refinery and its adjacent power plant will begin.
Strategic Biofuels stated that, “Once complete, the project will produce the most deeply carbon-negative liquid fuel in the world and operate completely ‘off the grid.’”
The company has worked closely with both EPA and LDNR, which have concurrently received the Class VI permit application.
It is possible that the Class VI permit will be ultimately granted by the LDNR, which has applied to EPA for “primacy,” which would be a grant of authority by EPA to the state of Louisiana to issue such Class VI permits.
“Only a few deep wells have penetrated the proposed sequestration reservoirs in the project area, which are not faulted,” said Steve Walkinshaw, vice president of geosciences for Strategic Biofuels. “Other than the company’s test well, all of those deep wells will be outside the plume area for decades and will be converted to closely watched reservoir-monitoring wells, essentially eliminating the possibility of leakage of the sequestered CO2 from any of them. This makes the Caldwell Parish location an optimal site for carbon dioxide sequestration.”
The security of the storage reservoir has been further enhanced by Caldwell Parish-specific legislation signed into law last year that will prohibit third-party drilling through the impervious shales that will form the top seal of the CO2 reservoirs.
“We are proud to have worked with Strategic Biofuels on this project since its very inception, when we provided a preliminary assessment of the Caldwell Parish site’s suitability for sequestration,” said Dan Collins, vice president of geosciences for Geostock Sandia. “It is exciting to see that early evaluation transformed into a full permit application comprising over 15,000 pages of highly technical data and analysis and supporting documentation.”
Strategic Biofuels stated that since its formation in 2020, the company and its Louisiana Green Fuels project team have made substantial progress demonstrating the proposed plant’s ability to achieve deep carbon negativity, which is highly dependent on the ability to annually sequester nearly 1.4 million metric tons of CO2 that will be a byproduct of the renewable diesel fuel refinery process and the green power generated to operate the plant.
Strategic Biofuels’ strategy of drilling and testing the critically important Class V stratigraphic test well at the beginning of the project distinguishes it from most other proposed sequestration projects in Louisiana.
According to Strategic Biofuels, others have submitted Class VI permit applications “without having drilled and tested the stratigraphic test wells that provide the reams of actual onsite geologic data needed to most accurately model and predict the behavior of the injected carbon dioxide in the reservoir over time,” the company stated. “Data available only from a stratigraphic test well, drilled for that purpose, has allowed for a more robust and more complete application.”
Other recent milestones achieved by the company include a groundbreaking ceremony for construction of infrastructure improvements at the Port of Columbia, the licensing of Johnson Matthey-BP’s advanced Fischer-Tropsch technology, and the most recent announcement that it has been invited by the U.S. DOE’s Loan Programs Office to submit a Part II application for a proposed $1.6 billion loan guarantee under the Title XVII Innovative Clean Energy Loan Guarantee Program.