Australia’s dormant carbon capture and storage projects may gain some momentum after BP and Santos said they would join up on a pending site as world’s largest coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporting country steps up its climate change fight.
Australia’s conservative government is working on policies to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS), projects where carbon dioxide (CO2) is reinjected underground out of the atmosphere, to meet its Paris Climate Accord commitments to cut carbon emissions.
Santos, Australia’s second-largest independent gas producer, has begun engineering studies on a CCS project in the Cooper Basin in central Australia which would inject 1.7-million tonnes a year of CO2 into a former gas reservoir.
"With the world demanding more hydrocarbons for at least the next two decades, any serious response to climate change must include pathways to make these fuels cleaner," Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said on Wednesday.