Santos and joint venture partner Beach Energy announced a final investment decision to proceed with the US$165 million (A$220 million) Moomba carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in South Australia, with startup expected in 2024.Santos has successfully registered the Moomba CCS project with the Clean Energy Regulator.
The Clean Energy Regulator’s CCS method provides a crediting period of 25 years, over which period the project will qualify for Australian Carbon Credit Units for emissions reduction from Moomba CCS.
Santos Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gallagher welcomed the Regulator’s registration of this globally significant project.
“This carbon reduction project in the South Australian outback will be one of the biggest and lowest cost in the world and will 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,” Mr Gallagher said.
“We forecast a full lifecycle cost of less than US$24 per tonne of CO2 including cash costs in operation of US$6-8 per tonne of CO2, with first injection targeted for 2024.
“This decision is a critical step in decarbonising natural gas on our path to new low-emissions and clean-burning fuels such as hydrogen.
“It is also an important milestone in our plan for Santos to achieve net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2040.”
The International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) Sustainable Development Scenario requires a hundredfold increase in CCS between now and 2050 to achieve the world’s climate goals – going from 40 million tonnes of CO2 stored each year today to 5.6 billion tonnes in just 30 years time.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said recently: “Our numbers show that reaching net-zero goals without CCS will be almost impossible.”
Santos has a 66.7 per cent interest in the Moomba CCS project and is operator. The remaining interest is held by Beach Energy.
(Source: Santos)