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announced last week that it was delivering a car- players are increasingly touting carbon capture
bon-neutral LNG cargo to domestic gas distrib- and storage (CCS) as a means of ensuring emis-
utor Shizuoka Gas. sions from the production of LNG are contained
New deliveries to other destinations are also at the liquefaction site.
becoming more plentiful. This week, BP said it In late August, Indonesian regulator SKKMi-
had delivered a carbon-offset cargo to Taiwan’s gas approved BP’s plans for a CCS project at the
CPC, in its first such delivery to the Asia-Pacific Tangguh LNG site to help support an expansion
region. However, Bloomberg noted that while of the facility’s LNG production. (See GLNG
the credits involved covered carbon dioxide Week 35) In the US, meanwhile, Venture Global
(CO2) and methane emissions generated during LNG recently unveiled plans to develop CCS
the production and up to the point of transfer- capacity to serve its Calcasieu Pass liquefaction
ring the LNG to the receiving terminal, they did terminal and its proposed Plaquemines LNG
not cover the emissions from the combustion of plant. Calcasieu Pass is under construction and
gas. This part of the process produces roughly approaching completion, while initial work at
70% of the total carbon footprint, the news ser- the Plaquemines site began in August before
vice noted. being disrupted by Hurricane Ida.
This example illustrates one of the challenges While it will take time for the CCS capacity to
involved in the trade of carbon-neutral LNG – be built, the plan puts Venture Global on course
there is no industry-wide standard to measure to become the first US LNG producer to deploy
emissions from the production and trade of the CCS. Cheniere Energy and Sempra Energy have
super-chilled fuel. This becomes clearer still also suggested that they would consider options
when examining other carbon-neutral or car- for developing CCS at their US LNG plants,
bon-offset cargoes more closely. For example, which are already operational, but no concrete
in the case of Petronas’ delivery to Shikoku, the plans for this have emerged yet.
offsets involved covered emissions from produc- CCS would also be a component of plants
tion to shipment, but did not cover the cargo’s that are being proposed for the US Gulf Coast
consumption in Japan, according to a spokesper- by NextDecade and G2 Net Zero LNG. These
son from Shikoku that was cited by Bloomberg. plants are not guaranteed to be built – indeed,
Efforts to develop standardised methodol- NextDecade’s Rio Grande LNG recently suffered
ogies are underway, often involving traders of a blow when a court ordered a review of the pro-
LNG, but any methodologies that emerge will ject’s environmental impact. Nonetheless, CCS
have to compete with rival ones for uptake across increasingly appears to have a role to play at new
the industry. The point at which numerous LNG LNG terminals – and potentially existing ones
players subscribe to a single methodology could too.
therefore still be some time away. In the mean- However, the only existing LNG project to
time, companies will likely continue to decar- have a CCS component to date, Chevron’s Gor-
bonise in a piecemeal manner, where the use of gon LNG in Australia, has suffered numerous
offsets is widespread but the types of players that technical setbacks and has fallen far short of its
provide carbon credits vary and the approach initial CO2 capture targets to date. Other devel-
attracts further criticism. opers of CCS capacity for LNG terminals will
have to demonstrate that they can deploy carbon
Carbon capture capture more effectively in order for the technol-
This is not to say, however, that using carbon off- ogy to be seen as a viable decarbonisation option
sets is the only way to decarbonise LNG. Other for the LNG industry.™

Week 37 16•September•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P5