The San Juan County Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved a memorandum of agreement between New Mexico Tech and the San Juan County.

The agreement states that the county will provide support and engagement with the communities in the county.

William Ampomah, a research engineer from New Mexico Tech, gave a detailed slide presentation seeking cooperation from the county for its carbon capture and storage efforts.

According to the county staff summary report, the funding from the U.S. Department of Energy will be used to “accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage projects in the San Juan Basin in an equitable and environmentally responsible manner.”

The agreement states that New Mexico Tech will “secure funding secure funding through the U.S. Department of Energy's DE-FOA-0003014 funding opportunity: Regional Initiative for Technical Assistance Partnerships to Advance Deployment of Basin-scale Carbon Transport and Storage and Community Engagement.”

It also states that New Mexico Tech will “engage a “multidisciplinary team with expertise in education, community engagement, carbon storage resource assessment, project management, monitoring, reporting and verification for CCS projects, CO2 pressure management and optimization, legal, regulatory, CO2 transportation and safety.”

The San Juan County agreement

The county acknowledges the expertise and capabilities of New Mexico Tech's multidisciplinary team.

a. Support engagement with communities to implement the community benefit plan.

b. Provide training for various organizations, including universities, community colleges, and trade professionals.

c. Reevaluate and share CO2 storage resource and hazard assessment for the San Juan community.

d. Identify crosscutting opportunities for supporting the development of CO2 storage projects.

e. Offer technical assistance to both project developers and the community to ensure equitable deployment of multiple carbon storage projects in the San Juan Basin.

Ampomah, describing the geological features in the San Juan Basin, said there is a “saltwater invested formation’’ that will serve as the storage complex. He said there is a cap rock that will “seal that will more or less maintain the CO2 that has been injected” so that will prevent CO2 from leaking into the underground source of drinking water.

“The photic zone, euphotic zone, epipelagic zone, or sunlight zone is the uppermost layer of a body of water that receives sunlight, allowing phytoplankton to perform photosynthesis. It undergoes a series of physical, chemical, and biological processes that supply nutrients into the upper water column,” according to Wikipedia.

Ampomah, emphasizing the safety considerations, said, “and that is a big deal for the EPA,” he said, adding that “for us as scientists to make sure that we can store it successfully and safely.”

Ampomah said they drilled an 8,800-foot-deep well in the San Juan Basin to collect more than 450 core samples and done a lot of experimental work to “support the analysis” that this area is a “strong basin to be able to store CO2.”

Though not specific with amounts of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Ampomah said, it would allow “them to put in fiber in the well that will “record potential microseismic events that can happen as a result of injection.”

It will measure temperature that will reveal movement of the CO2 and if it’s coming up, he said.

New Mexico Tech plans to work on three sites to prove they can store CO2 in the San Juan Basin. They plan to store 50 million metric tons of CO2 within 10 or 15 years, he said.

Ampomah said they cannot do the project without support and must engage the community and are “mandated” to look at quality jobs and how many jobs will be created. He was unclear on how many jobs would be created when asked by the commissioners.

He said they are looking for support, including technical, from San Juan County as they plan to hire people from the area, based on “diversity, inclusion and accessibility.” “Even though the budget hasn’t started, I’m hiring people from the area,” Amporah said. “We really want you to be engaged in this particular process.”

He asked the commissioners to participate in their outreach programs and conferences and to hold them accountable.

Beckstead asked for clarification on the scale – the storage of 50 million tons of CO2 – of the project and the number of jobs that will be provided and what it would be worth to the community.

Ampomah said the first well they drilled was a $12 million project and the next two are estimated to be about $9 million each.

He said that all three projects, including a carbon transport pipeline, will create jobs in the community.

Commissioner Teri Fortner also asked about jobs, and Ampomah replied that he would have to look up the numbers, but there were 20 entities involved in the first well and that the majority of jobs are of a three-month duration during the drilling phase. He said that a number of other long-term maintenance and process control jobs are also created.

The question of water consumption was posed by commissioner Commissioner Steve Lanier. Ampomah said they work very hard to use “reused water,” but he would have to cross-check to get the actual number of gallons that was used on the first well project.