Partnership for Offshore Carbon Storage Resources and Technology Development in the Gulf of Mexico | DE FOA 0001734

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0001734

The Department of Energy, through the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), issued Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0001734 titled "Partnership for Offshore Carbon Storage Resources and Technology Development in the Gulf of Mexico" to accelerate the readiness of offshore geologic carbon dioxide (CO2) storage in the Gulf of Mexico. The central idea is to form one or more government-industry partnerships that can pull together the scientific, engineering, regulatory, and operational groundwork needed to store large volumes of CO2 offshore in a way that is demonstrably secure over the long term. The effort is framed around practical deployment: not just studying offshore storage in theory, but assembling the knowledge base, resolving barriers, and clarifying what would be required to implement offshore storage at scale. The FOA also makes clear that offshore storage projects may be pursued either with enhanced hydrocarbon recovery (EHR) or without it, meaning the program is open to storage concepts that involve producing additional oil or gas as part of CO2 injection as well as concepts focused purely on sequestration.

A key feature of the opportunity is its emphasis on partnership-driven problem solving. Rather than funding isolated research tasks, DOE is looking for collaborative teams that can identify and close the most important gaps that currently limit offshore CO2 storage in the Gulf of Mexico. The FOA highlights several categories of gaps that partnerships are expected to tackle: knowledge gaps (what is not yet known well enough about Gulf of Mexico reservoirs, seals, and CO2 behavior offshore), regulatory issues (permitting pathways, roles of federal and state entities, how offshore requirements interact with existing environmental and subsurface regulations), infrastructure requirements (pipelines, compression, offshore platforms, wells, monitoring systems, and integration with existing offshore assets), and technical challenges (site screening and selection, injection strategies, reservoir characterization, monitoring/verification, risk management, and long-term stewardship). In practical terms, the goal is to reduce uncertainty and friction so that future offshore storage projects can move from concept to permitting, construction, and operation with clearer expectations and lower risk.

The FOA is positioned as a "build-on-what-already-exists" program rather than a blank-slate initiative. DOE anticipates that funded projects will incorporate findings from ongoing work under DE-FOA-0001246, "Offshore Storage Resource Assessment," which focused on assessing offshore storage resources. Applicants are also expected to build upon the experience and lessons learned from the DOE Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships (RCSPs), which have generated a large body of onshore storage knowledge, and from prior offshore CO2 storage projects, many of which were international collaborations. That framing signals that DOE wants applicants to use established best practices and real operational experience, adapting them to the unique conditions of the Gulf of Mexico offshore environment (including offshore well operations, marine monitoring constraints, platform logistics, and the offshore regulatory landscape).

From an administrative and funding standpoint, this is a discretionary competitive opportunity using a cooperative agreement, which typically means DOE expects substantial involvement during project execution (for example, coordination on technical direction, data sharing, and milestone-based oversight). The activity category is Energy, Science and Technology and other Research and Development, with CFDA number 81.089. Eligibility is described as unrestricted (open to any type of entity), subject to any additional eligibility clarifications included in the full FOA text, which is common for DOE opportunities that may include requirements about teaming, cost share, or specific qualifications for lead applicants and partners. The FOA was created on June 12, 2017, with an original closing date of August 14, 2017, and applicants were instructed to follow the detailed due date guidance in the full announcement.

In terms of scale, DOE anticipated making up to two awards, with an award ceiling of $8,000,000 per award. That budget and the small number of expected awards reflect an intent to fund a limited number of robust, high-impact partnerships capable of coordinating across multiple stakeholders and delivering outputs that materially improve offshore storage readiness. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a targeted push to make offshore CO2 storage in the Gulf of Mexico more actionable by combining resource knowledge, engineering and monitoring approaches, infrastructure planning, and regulatory clarity into a coherent foundation that supports secure, long-term, large-scale sequestration.

• The Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory in the energy, science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Partnership for Offshore Carbon Storage Resources and Technology Development in the Gulf of Mexico" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.089.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jun 12, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 14, 2017 Please refer to the FOA application due date information contained in the full FOA announcement.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $8,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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