Three leading LNG market participants join forces for carbon-storage hub for Asia located in Malay Basin
Three leading liquefied natural gas market participants, Petronas of Malaysia, Mitsui & Co and Japan and French TotalEnergies have signed an agreement to develop a carbon-capture and storage (CCS) project in Southeast Asia as the region tries to keep pace with Europe, the US and Australian on such ventures.
The three partners said they would evaluate several carbon-dioxide storage sites in the Malay Basin, including both saline aquifers and depleted offshore fields.
“This partnership aims to develop a CO2 merchant storage service to decarbonize industrial customers in Asia,” they stated.
TotalEnergies is the most active among the three on carbon joint ventures and is already developing storage capacity of 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030 through significant industrial projects such as Northern Lights in Norway and Aramis in the Netherlands.
Existing technologies
Toru Matsui, a Senior Executive Managing Officer at Mitsui, said CCS is based on existing technologies and can be seen as an affordable solution to decarbonize the hard-to-abate emitters.
“Mitsui will utilize its expertise in the oil and gas upstream activities and extensive business networks to jointly work with Petronas and TotalEnergies to develop a CCS value chain project in Malaysia,” Matsui stated.
“In Asia, where countries such as South Korea and Japan are aiming to cut their emissions the development of a CCS value chain for hard-to-abate industrial emissions will require a specific regulatory framework and significant investment,” the companies noted.
Through this agreement, the partner said they would study several potential storage sites, determine the best technical means to deliver CO2 to Malaysia from industrial clusters in the region and develop the most appropriate business framework for commercialization of a carbon storage service in Malaysia.
“Petronas is proud to collaborate with forward-looking partners such as TotalEnergies and Mitsui in developing solutions through CCS to move us closer towards a lower-carbon future,” said Tengku Muhammad Taufik, President and Group Chief Executive of Petronas.
“The strategic partnership demonstrates Petronas’ commitment to position Malaysia as a regional CCS hub to capture opportunities in the energy transition with a focus on reducing the carbon footprint of our operations to continue delivering the energy needs of today,” he added.
TotalEnergies Chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanné said the company was pleased to join forces with Petronas and Mitsui on the carbon storage hub project in Malaysia to support decarbonization in Asia.
“We will bring to the partnership our strong CCS expertise, anchored in Europe with a first integrated project in Norway due to start next year and several other projects,” Pouyanné added.
