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Santos Ltd is collaborating with energy infrastructure business APA Group on the potential development of carbon dioxide infrastructure throughout eastern Australia.
The two Australian companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), aiming to assess potential decarbonization opportunities by working jointly to link heavy carbon dioxide emitters and carbon dioxide import locations to the Santos-operated carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility in Moomba, South Australia, they said in separate news releases Wednesday.
The collaboration will include an assessment of CCS pipeline transport routes from key emission sources in Gladstone, Port Bonython, and Greater Sydney to the Moomba CCS facility in the Cooper Basin. The opportunities are “subject to necessary internal and external approvals and a longer-form project agreement being negotiated and finalized by the parties”, according to the releases.
The Moomba CCS project is the most advanced of Santos’s three planned CCS hubs in Australia, the company said, with its first phase having the potential to store up to 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The amount is equivalent to more than a quarter of the emissions reduction achieved in Australia’s electricity sector over the full year to March 2023, Santos noted.
The actual volumes stored at Moomba CCS will depend on gas production levels in the Cooper Basin, which in turn will determine the volume of carbon dioxide available for storage, Santos said, noting that the first injection is on track to begin in 2024.
“I am very excited about the growth potential for carbon storage services at Moomba. Santos has already booked 100 million [metric tons] of carbon storage resource in the Cooper Basin in South Australia”, Santos Energy Solutions Executive Vice President Alan Stuart-Grant said. “The Cooper and Eromanga Basins have enormous carbon storage capacity, with the potential to store up to 20 million [metric tons] of CO2 per year for up to 50 years”.
“The world simply cannot achieve net zero by 2050 without a large scale-up of CCS and Santos has the expertise and infrastructure to be able to deliver low-cost, large-scale CCS and decarbonization technologies”, Stuart-Grant continued. “Santos is seeing surging international and domestic demand for our CCS capabilities in the Cooper Basin and this new partnership will put us in a leading position in what is essentially a new industry which will help drive the decarbonization of our region. Importantly, it is an industry that can utilize the skills of our existing workforce and secure their jobs for decades to come”.
“Beyond the near-term carbon abatement opportunity, this MoU also paves the way for Moomba to become a low carbon fuels hub as technology is unlocked and market demand continues to increase through the energy transition. We are determined to deliver reliable, affordable, lower-carbon energy to our customers”, Stuart-Grant concluded.
“As an Australian energy infrastructure provider, we have great capability to support our customers and other parts of Australian industry to explore the development of CCS projects and which have the potential to support the decarbonization of our economy and hard-to-abate sectors, APA Group Executive for Energy Solutions Darren Rogers said. “We have deep experience and capability in building complex linear infrastructure, having developed thousands of kilometers of pipelines across Australia, which will continue to play an important role in Australia’s energy transition”.
Santos said it is “forging ahead with plans for decarbonization and new fuel technologies through the signing of MOUs with various strategic partners”. According to a separate news release Wednesday, the company and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) agreed to work together to develop a joint global carbon management platform supporting the decarbonization journey of customers in the Asia-Pacific through a strategic collaboration agreement.
APA is an Australian energy infrastructure business that owns, manages, and operates a diverse portfolio of energy assets worth around $16.39 billion (AUD 25 billion).
To contact the author, email rocky.teodoro@rigzone.com
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