"Carbon Capture" Project In Heart Of California Oil Country Promises Five Long-Term Jobs Once Completed

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The fledgling technology is a key part of the state’s plan to fight climate change, which also includes phasing out oil drilling by 2045. The county and California Resources Corporation (CRC), the oil company hoping to build the TerraVault, see carbon management as a vital new revenue stream. Kern County stands to lose thousands of jobs and millions in tax dollars as drilling declines. But carbon storage facilities themselves are not currently projected to generate large numbers of jobs, according to a report prepared for the county. Kern’s own analysis shows the initial phase of the TerraVault project will only produce five permanent positions.

To create more jobs, the county unveiled a plan nearly a year ago to attract clean energy industries. That plan, however, has not resulted in any firm commitments from companies. Lorelei Oviatt, the county’s director of planning and natural resources, helped develop the plan. She sees carbon management as crucial to the county’s survival. In a letter to the Board of Supervisors last year, she wrote that “the state’s policies of driving out oil production” do not address the $80 million the industry contributes to Kern County’s coffers.

Oviatt, whose department is overseeing the environmental review of the TerraVault project, acknowledges the county’s push to embrace carbon management comes with a great deal of uncertainty. “You’ve heard that analogy of, ‘We’re building the airplane as we fly it,’” Oviatt said in an interview before the public meeting in Taft. “We’re manufacturing the parts as we fly it.”

CRC has said that the TerraVault would help California meet its climate goals and “promote economic development and bring living-wage jobs to Kern County,” according to a county report. On websites and in press releases promoting the project, the company has emphasized its potential to create “quality union jobs” in construction and technology. The facility now under consideration in Kern County is one of several CRC plans to build across the state. The construction phase for that project is slated to produce 80 jobs. But the county has determined the TerraVault project will result in five jobs once the facility is operational. “With respect to employment, the project would not induce substantial growth,” the county wrote in its recently-published environmental impact report.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022024/california-oil-country-hopes-carbon-management-will-provide-jobs/