Page 14 - AsiaElec Week 11 2022

AsiaElec CARBON CAPTURE AsiaElec

Australia accelerates CCS plans

AUSTRALIA CARBON capture and storage (CCS) and car- commented George Varma, a hydrogen expert
bon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) at law firm Pinsent Masons, this week.
initiatives are picking up pace in Australia as The Australian Petroleum Production &
decarbonisation increasingly becomes a prior- Exploration Association (APPEA) has wel-
ity for countries and companies alike. Nowhere comed the bill as a positive development for the
is this trend more prominent than in the oil and state.
gas industry – a significant contributor to green- “With [Western Australia] home to most of
house gas (GHG) emissions – but which is now the oil and gas activities in Australia, CCS is a
trying to balance decarbonisation goals with key tool in our decarbonisation toolkit to reduce
continuing to meet growing energy demand. emissions,” stated APPEA’s director for Western
Indeed, the situation has been further com- Australia, Claire Wilkinson.
plicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Western Australia’s government has said it
is already disrupting global energy flows, as a will consult with the industry and the public on
small number of countries have banned Rus- any proposed legislative changes before the new
sian energy imports. Australia is among those bill is finalised.
to announce a ban on Russian energy imports “This consultation process will be extremely
– along with the US and UK – though Can- helpful to ensure that the legislative framework
berra has said the ban would only take effect not only achieves the objective of decarbonising
after cargoes that have already been paid for are the industry but is also fit for purpose from a
delivered. Meanwhile, the European Union has practical perspective and is legislation that assists
announced an unprecedented move to reduce the industry to implement CCS technologies,”
Russian gas imports by two-thirds within a year. Varma said.
These developments contributed to oil prices This comes as members of the country’s oil
hitting new multi-year highs in recent days and gas industry advance their own CCS plans,
before dropping back somewhat, with gas prices in Western Australia and elsewhere. This week,
following the same trajectory. Debate over the Santos said it had kicked off the front-end
implications of this for the energy transition is engineering and design (FEED) phase of its
ongoing, but in the meantime, decarbonisation Bayu-Undan CCS project. While this venture
initiatives continue and for the oil and gas indus- will be located in Timor-Leste waters, it is antic-
try, CCS is at the forefront of such initiatives. ipated to serve the Darwin LNG project in Aus-
In Australia, CCS development is being tralia’s Northern Territory, as the Bayu-Undan
advanced on both the federal and state levels. gas field does currently.
The federal Australian Department of Industry, Japan’s Inpex also recently unveiled plans
Science, Energy and Resources describes CCS as to build a CCS facility near Darwin to serve its
a “priority low-emissions technology” under the Ichthys LNG project. And Woodside is explor-
country’s Technology Investment Roadmap. ing the feasibility of a multi-user CCS project
According to the department, Canberra is near Karratha, Western Australia, together with
investing more than AUD300mn ($219mn) in BP and Japan Australia LNG – a joint venture
CCUS over a 10-year period. The investments between Mitsubishi and Mitsui & Co., also
will be directed into “enabling infrastructure” known as MIMI.
for large-scale deployment of CCUS. The gov- Chevron already operates a large-scale CCS
ernment has set a “stretch goal” of bringing the project in Western Australia at the Gorgon LNG
costs of carbon dioxide (CO2) compression, terminal. However, that project was beset by
transport and storage down to below AUD20 delays during construction, and has failed to
($15) per tonne. meet its carbon capture targets to date. Gorgon
Against this backdrop, regional CCS initia- is Australia’s only working CCS project currently,
tives are now being advanced as well. The gov- and while this is set to change, its performance
ernment of Western Australia said on March points to the considerable challenges facing the
9 that it would draft a bill to provide the state’s nascent carbon capture industry.
“resources sector with further investment and Chevron Australia’s managing director, Mark
regulatory certainty as it transitions to a low-car- Hatfield, told Upstream this week that the Gor-
bon future”. gon CCS project is providing his company with
The legislation will be known as the Green- “key learnings, which we continue to share with
house Gas Storage and Transport Bill and it will industry and government to assist in the devel-
be targeted at the state’s mining, natural gas and opment of this critical emissions-reduction
LNG industries in particular. technology”.
“This is an important step for the develop- More participants in the CCS industry will
ment of the CCS market in Western Australia help to improve technology and bring down
and will be critical to assist the oil and gas opera- costs. There is still a long way to go, though, and
tors in the market to effectively implement CCS considerable uncertainty over how challenging
technology to decarbonise their operations,” the path will prove to be.™

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