Australian LNG plant operator Santos has welcomed the federal government’s support for the carbon capture and storage (CCS) method for its Emissions Reduction Fund and Adelaide-based Santos would immediately register the Moomba CCS Project in South Australia with the Clean Energy Regulator to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).
Santos said its A$210 million (US$151.4M) Moomba CCS Project in the Cooper Basin of outback South Australia would be one of the biggest in the world and safely and permanently store 1.7 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide per year in the same reservoirs that held oil and gas in place for tens of millions of years.
The CCS approval comes as Santos and Australian-listed energy company Oil Search are implementing the takeover of Oil Search by Santos in a deal worth A$8.40 billion (US$6.25 billion) to create a key Asia-Pacific LNG and energy player.
The all-share transaction brings together LNG assets in the Timor Sea, the Australian state of Queensland and in Papua New Guinea.
Under the deal Oil Search shareholders will own around 38.5 percent of the merged entity and Santos shareholders will own 61.5 percent.
In regard to the Moomba CCS project, Santos Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gallagher said this announcement from the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, puts Australia at the forefront of CCS deployment.
Gallagher noted that groups such as the International Energy Agency were convinced that reaching greenhouse-gas targets would be “almost impossible” without CCS ventures in place around the world.
Front-end engineering and design is complete for the capture, compression, dehydration (removing any water) and storage of CO2 from the Moomba plant.
As part of this phase of the project, Santos successfully injected approximately 100 tonnes of CO2 deep underground into the depleted gas reservoirs
“CCS will reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and is set to underpin a new, large-scale carbon storage industry for the nation, creating new skilled, secure, well-paid jobs,” stated Gallagher.
“The Australian Government’s focus on CCS and other low-emission technologies sets Australia up to capitalise on our natural assets and become a carbon-storage superpower, building on the position we have established as an energy superpower over more than half a century,” declared Gallagher.
“With the new CCS method now approved, Santos will seek to have the Moomba CCS Project registered to generate ACCUs through the Emissions Reduction Fund. Once the project has been registered, we will be in a position to make a Final Investment Decision to proceed,” he added.
Brett Woods, the Santos Chief Operating Officer for Midstream, Infrastructure and Clean Fuels, said Australia needed low-cost abatement to maintain its position as a leading energy exporter and to decarbonise manufacturing of energy-intensive materials such as steel, cement, bricks, chemicals, plastics and the many everyday products that are made from oil and gas.
“Using natural gas combined with CCS is also the fastest, lowest-cost way to develop a new hydrogen industry for Australia,” added Woods.
