A big new Exxon Mobil climate deal that got assist from Joe Biden

Could it be that Big Oil’s next big thing got a big assist from Joe Biden?

Maybe, if carbon capture and storage is indeed as big a deal as ExxonMobil’s first-of-its-kind deal to extract, transport and store carbon from other companies’ factories implies.

The deal, announced last month, calls for ExxonMobil to capture carbon emitted by CF Industries‘ ammonia factory in Donaldsonville, La., and transport it to underground storage using pipelines owned by Enlink Midstream. Set to start up in 2025, the deal is meant to herald a new stage in dealing with carbon produced by manufacturers, and is the latest step in ExxonMobil’s often-tense dialogue with investors who want oil companies to slash emissions.

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August, may determine whether deals like Exxon’s become a trend. The law expands tax credits for capturing carbon from industrial uses in a bid to offset the high up-front costs of plans to capture carbon from places like CF’s plant, as other tax credits in the law lower costs of renewable power and electric cars. 

The Inflation Reduction Act and Big Oil

The law may help oil companies like ExxonMobil build profitable businesses to replace some of the revenue and profit they’ll lose as EVs proliferate. Though the company isn’t sharing financial projections, it has committed to investing $15 billion in CCS by 2027 and ExxonMobil Low-Carbon Solutions president Dan Ammann says it may invest more.

“We see a big business opportunity here,” Ammann told CNBC’s David Faber. “We’re seeing interest from companies across a whole range of industries, a whole range of sectors, a whole range of geographies.”

The deal calls for ExxonMobil to capture and remove 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly from CF’s factory, equivalent to replacing 700,000 gasoline-powered vehicles with electric versions. 

Each company involved is pursuing its own version of the low-carbon industrial economy. CF wants to produce more carbon-free blue ammonia, a process that often involves extracting ammonia’s components from carbon-laden fossil fuels. Enlink hopes to become a kind of railroad for captured CO2 emissions, calling itself the would-be “CO2 transportation provider of choice” for an industrial corridor laden with refineries and chemical plants. 

Exxon itself wants to develop carbon capture as a new business, Amman said, pointing to a “very big backlog of similar projects,” part of the company’s pledge to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as Exxon itself emits by 2050.  

“We want oil companies to be active participants in carbon reduction,” said Julio Friedmann, a deputy assistant energy secretary under…