Should the US government spend much, much more on carbon capture?

Carbon-capture projects are economically unviable at the moment and will need a major increase in government spending for wide-scale deployment, says John Minge, former chairman and president of BP America.

On today’s Platts Capitol Crude, Minge talks about the policy changes needed, including expansion of federal tax incentives, to build out the carbon-capture technology that many point to as one path to address the release of greenhouse gases from growing oil and natural gas development.

Development is complicated, Minge says, as infrastructure to accommodate movement of an equivalent of 13 million b/d of oil will need to be built and there’s no clear evidence that widespread carbon-capture projects would ever turn a profit. Minge led the development of the National Petroleum Council’s recent carbon capture, use and storage report, an 18-month study requested by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.