The Australian Government will spend AU$566m (US$378m) in new offshore mapping programmes that will also help identify new carbon capture and storage (CCS) locations and possible sites for clean hydrogen projects.
Announced a day before last Thursday’s (16th May) announcement by Resources Minister Madeleine King of Australia’s new Future Gas Strategy, the investment aligns with King’s plan to release more greenhouse gas acreage for CCS.
This coincided with Western Australia passing legislation last week that enables transport and storage of greenhouse gas.
Taking advantage of the government’s support of CCS, Australian company Pilot Energy (Pilot) will next week host an Austrade-support delegation of Korean companies at its first Mid West Clean Energy Project (MWCEP) near Geraldton in Western Australia.
“In a show of support for the CCS in Australia and especially Western Australia, the delegation is on the sidelines of the Australia-Korea CCUS Industry Seminar in Perth,” said a company spokesperson.
“All delegates on the Pilot Energy exploratory tour have expressed active interest in carbon capture, utilisation and storage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a key means to support South Korea’s Net Zero targets.”
According to Pilot, the first stage of the MWCEP projects involves converting the depleted Cliff Head offshore oil field into a permanent carbon dioxide (CO2) storage operation capable of holding more than one million tonnes per annum from 2026.
The project targets over 50 million tonnes of potential total storage capacity, placing it within the top ten CCS projects globally and one of the first offshore CCS projects in Australia.
The MWCEP includes several sub-projects including carbon management for third parties, permanently storing the project’s own CO2 associated with blue hydrogen production and the production of over one million tonnes per annum of clean ammonia from blue and green hydrogen for export.
Pilot is nearing approval from the National Offshore Petroleum Titles Administrator after becoming the first in Australia to seek regulatory approval for an offshore CCS project under 2006 legislation.
Federal approval of the Declaration of Storage Formation for the Cliff Head oil field is expected in the coming weeks, a key milestone for the project spanning state and federal jurisdictions.
The South Korean government has been investing heavily in R&D in CCS in hopes that it may be part of a low-carbon of Net Zero energy system.
HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering is currently developing a CO2 subsea injection system at the depleted Donghae field, located around 20 miles offshore the port city of Ulsan.
The CCS project, currently hailed at South Korea’s largest, has an initial ambition to capture and store 1.2mtpa of CO2 from the nation’s industrial complexes.
