Occidental Petroleum Is Making Strides to Capture This $5 Trillion Opportunity

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) sees tremendous potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS). The process that extracts carbon dioxide from the air and stores it underground could help significantly reduce climate-impacting carbon emissions in the future. CCS is not only good for the environment, but it also represents a potentially lucrative market opportunity.

Occidental believes that CCS could become a $3 trillion to $5 trillion global market in the future. Because of that, the oil company estimates that it could eventually generate as much in earnings and cash flow from its CCS business as it currently makes by producing oil and gas. That's leading the company to take several steps to capture this massive opportunity.

Occidental Petroleum has a long history of utilizing carbon dioxide to produce more oil through a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). As oil wells pump crude out of a reservoir, the pressure falls, causing the production rate to decline. Oil companies have found that if they inject carbon dioxide into oil wells, they can increase the production rate. Occidental is a leader in EOR. It operates carbon dioxide production fields, transportation pipelines, and injection wells, primarily in the Permian Basin.

Source Fool.com