Danny Rice: Yes. Hey, Batty. This is Danny. That’s a great question. I think first to address the challenge with these long pipelines. I think these infrastructure challenges in opposition to new infrastructure is specific to CCS, it’s specific to any infrastructure projects. Whether it’s pipelines, whether it’s solar farms, wind farms, you’re seeing people that are very sensitive to their landowner rights because it’s their rights, especially here in the United States. And so I think one of the things that we’ve kind of learned just from observing over the last couple of years is just because you’re doing something that’s good for the environment, doesn’t necessarily give you the social license to operate wherever you want, however you want, whenever you want.
I think you always have to be a good steward and a partner of those communities that could be adversely impacted by your activities. And just because you’re doing what’s great for the environment, doesn’t give you the rights to be able to trump that. And so I think for us that certainly shapes our approach on origination, where we are really trying to minimize the impact in order to maximize the benefit of our plants. And so what does that mean in practical terms? That means is as we’re really mapping that stuff out to really understand where the CO2 sinks, where’s the electricity infrastructure, where’s the natural gas pipeline infrastructure? We’re not really just identifying just like broad areas and saying, we’ll build that 200-mile pipeline.
Because that 200 mile pipeline, it’s not good for our bottom line because it’s incremental CapEx, but it also just exposes us just to more risk on the social side. And so what we are ideally trying to do is identify areas where we can put the plant adjacent to the electricity transmission line and the sink is directly below. And so we’re really minimizing all infrastructure. And that’s kind of an ideal scenario for us is put the plant directly on top of the sink in sequestered directly beneath the plant without having to build a 20- or a 50- or 100-mile pipeline or God forbid, a 1,000 mile pipeline. If we’re having to build 1,000 mile pipeline, we’re doing something wrong, right? And I think that’s like one of the advantages of why we’re excited about Project Permian, where it is.
There’s already that CO2 infrastructure network. We don’t have to build really any new CO2 pipelines. The permits are already in hand. And so it really just minimizes the risk of execution on project number one, but it’s also the approach that we’re taking on the origination projects, OP1 and beyond those. Really identify those areas where we can minimize any above-ground and below-ground disturbance in order to really be able to highlight the benefits of what these projects are going to be able to do. But again, it comes back to proper planning. And so that’s one of our key criteria is really identifying where we can establish these plants with minimal new infrastructure.
Betty Jiang : Great. That’s really helpful. Thanks. And then a quick follow up on your comments earlier about lead time in the future for OP1, 2, or 3 timing relative to Project Permian that you want to learn more and seeing how the equipment perform and before move on to the next plant. And so I’m wondering about the lead time for — between deciding them to move forward with the plant and then how long it takes to purchase all the equipment. Basically once you have all the learnings that you do that, how long would it take for you to move — before we see the next project?
Danny Rice: Yes, I’ll take one part of it, and then I’ll hand it over to Brian on like the equipment piece because there’s really two pieces to the project. There’s the surface, there’s the subsurface, there’s so the permitting piece, and the interconnect piece, and there’s the actual plant fees. And I think with origination, what I’m really focused on, staying ahead of Brian on the equipment side is setting the table for them. So it’s securing the acreage, securing the subsurface, getting into the interconnect queue, getting the Class II Class VI permits, sequestration permits in place. These are all like — those are actually like the longest lead time things. You’re talking about probably four to five years today to get a Class VI permits with any degree of confidence.
