CLIMATE CHANGELIKE AN OLD RACEHORSE, the West Seminole oilfield,
a 12-square-mile patch of dirt on Texas’s far western flank,
has been trudging along for years, kept kicking by an elixir
its jockey shoots into its rump.
On a recent afternoon, as storm clouds blanketed the
field and a winter wind howled, dozens of rusty pump jacks
rocked up and down, groaning with each revolution as
they sucked out more black gold. The drug that the field’s
operator, Occidental Petroleum, injects into West Seminole
loosens the oil in the stone beneath the sagebrush—forcing
from the rock ever more of the hydrocarbon treasure locked
inside its geologic pores. The magic medicine is an old
industrial gas with a new image problem: carbon dioxide.
For decades, Occidental has been pumping massive
quantities of CO 2 into the ground, juicing the flow of oil in
aging fields that have lost the oomph nature originally gave
them. The CO 2 frees more oil to rise to the surface, where
it can be sold and burned. The petroleum industry has
used this turbocharging technique—called “enhanced oil
recovery”—elsewhere. But Houston-based Occidental is a
global expert. Across thousands of square miles of eastern
New Mexico and western Texas, on the iconic swath ofS HAIL MARY
Oil companies are betting big on “carbon
capture” technology that sucks green-
house gases out of smokestacks and the
air. It could help a polluting industry
remake itself. But is it too little, too late?BY JEFFREY BALLA PLANET IN CRISIS : CARBON CAPTURELPHOTOGRAPHS BY BENJAMIN RASMUSSENCAR.W.04.20.XMIT.indd 59 FINAL 3/10/2020 8:24:15 PM