ExxonMobil Scales Up Carbon Capture and Community Investments in Louisiana

Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, presents a $600,000 check to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette President Dr. Joseph Savoie. The money will fund STEM scholarships for Vermilion Parish high school students and the university’s outreach on key energy topics. Photo courtesy of ExxonMobil.

Louisiana’s Vermilion Parish will be home to a landmark CO2 transportation and storage project ExxonMobil is building to help the state’s industries reduce their emissions.

As the university has announced, Exxon Mobil Corp. made the following contributions:

• Two $50,000 endowed scholarships for first-year students from Vermilion Parish who are pursuing degrees in the university’s College of Engineering or Ray P. Authement College of Sciences.
• $500,000 for outreach efforts in the university’s Energy Institute of Louisiana and Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Public Policy Center.

With these contributions, the university has reached nearly 75% of the $500 million goal for its current fundraising initiative, its largest-ever campaign.

“I recently visited Vermilion Parish and saw firsthand the extraordinary capabilities of the local workforce in this community,” said Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions. “We’re looking forward to building a carbon capture project that helps support local industries and Louisiana’s goal to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050.”

Carbon capture and storage – in which CO2 is captured and stored deep underground instead of being released into the atmosphere – is considered an essential solution for meeting net zero goals. It’s a proven technology, but will need to be deployed on a far broader scale than it is today.

“Scaling up carbon capture and sequestration will require a new generation of young people skilled in math and science, technology and engineering,” said Joe Colletti, ExxonMobil Louisiana Asset Manager. “We’re excited about helping build those skills here in Louisiana.”

ExxonMobil will transport and store up to 2 million metric tons a year (“MTA”) of CO2 from CF industries’ manufacturing site in Donaldsonville and up to 800,000 MTA from Nucor’s direct reduced iron facility in Convent. The combined total is equal to the emissions from more than 600,000 gasoline-powered cars.

Louisiana also is home to ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge integrated refining, chemicals and lubricants complex, the state’s largest manufacturing employer.