Van Spence is President of Denver-based Rampart Energy Company and its subsidiary, Carbon Vault Holdings LLC. Rampart has acted as a contract oil and gas operator throughout the United States and Canada since 1990. Carbon Vault was created in 2020 as a means of identifying and developing potential CO2 sequestration candidates. The first such installation was the DGC Great Plains Sequestration Project in central North Dakota, which received permit approval in January 2023, and began injecting in February 2024. Among the largest projects in the world, it has since sequestered more than 3.7 million metric tonnes of CO2.
Van has over 40 years of related industry experience. He began his career with Shell, prior to joining Rampart in 1993. He is a graduate of the University of Wyoming where he received a degree in Petroleum Engineering and was an Academic All-America baseball player. In 2025, he was awarded the PCOR Pioneer Award, which recognizes “Pioneering Efforts in Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage.”