Vicki Hollub, center left, attends a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental and 1PointFive Direct Air Capture plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28. Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg , Bloomberg
The speed with which Occidental and DAC has captivated the Biden administration is alarming for environmentalists and some scientists. DAC remains by far the most expensive way to capture carbon, and the technology is largely unproven outside one small plant in Iceland. There are serious questions about whether the large quantities of power the process needs will offset the climate benefits. The loudest critics insist DAC should never be used to justify fossil-fuel extraction.
But when Hollub was general manager of Occidental’s Permian EOR operations in 2011, she realized the company was limited not by the amount of oil in the ground, but by the availability of CO2. It was an odd problem, particularly because global warming is chiefly caused by its abundance of in the atmosphere. Hollub figured that if there was a way of extracting that CO2 from the air, it would be good for business and the environment, she told Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast last year.
Occidental invested in Carbon Engineering alongside Chevron Corp. in early 2019, pledging to accelerate commercialization of the startup’s technology. In the intervening years, however, outside factors threatened to derail the whole project. That includes Oxy’s $55 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum that sunk the company’s stock and incurred the wrath of activist investor Carl Icahn.
Hollub has been cautious so far about spending too much of Occidental’s own money. Instead, she put the company’s investment dollars into quicker-payback efforts such as drilling for oil in the Permian. Corporate polluters are already clamoring for the technology they view as being able to generate high-quality carbon credits to offset their own emissions. Already, companies such as All Nippon Airways, Airbus, Shopify and Thermo Fisher have bought carbon removal credits from 1PointFive, Oxy’s DAC subsidiary.