While environmental groups say carbon capture and storage (CCS)
has yet to work effectively and will prolong the use of fossil
fuels, the Labor government sees it as essential to slashing
emissions by 2050.
At the same time as announcing the award of the CCS permits, the
government also invited bids for new offshore oil and gas
exploration acreage, which it said was important for securing
energy supplies.
"Australia has the capacity to continue to be an energy export
leader, at the same time as developing a domestic offshore
carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry," Resources Minister
Madeleine King said in a statement.
Inpex, Woodside and TotalEnergies jointly won a permit for an
area in the Bonaparte Basin and Woodside won a permit in the
Browse Basin, both off northwestern Australia, where Woodside is
looking to develop the country's biggest untapped offshore gas
prospect but only if it can do so profitably with CCS.
"Australia is ideally placed to become a world leader in this
emerging industry, with large, stable offshore geological
formations for greenhouse gas storage," King said.
Inpex, with a 53% stake, said it would be the operator of the
Bonaparte CCS assessment joint venture.
"Acquiring this permit provides an exciting opportunity to prove
up a large-scale carbon storage site in northern Australia, with
the potential to become one of the largest CCS projects in the
world," Inpex President Director Australia Hitoshi Okawa said in
a statement.
Inpex runs the Ichthys LNG project, Australia's fourth-largest
LNG project, co-owned by TotalEnergies, and is counting on using
CCS to help cut emissions from its operations and produce
"carbon neutral" LNG.
Down the track, CCS could be used for "blue hydrogen", Okawa
said. Blue hydrogen is produced using gas, with the carbon
emitted in the process captured and stored.
"If and when the demand for hydrogen increases and CCS has been
demonstrated at scale, INPEX plans to gradually shift to blue
hydrogen production," he said at the NT Resources Week
conference in the city of Darwin, run by Informa.
(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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