The permits – G-9-AP and G-11-AP – will grant Santos access to ‘evaluation and appraisal’ work in Carnarvon and Bonaparte basins alongside its joint venture partners.
By exploring the potential for further CO2 storage sites, Santos hopes to advance development of its three hub carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategy.
In the Carnarvon basin, the permit provides potential storage opportunities beyond Santos’ Reindeer fields, where it has plans for a Western Australia CCS hub at Reindeer and Devil Creek.
The second permit is larger and covers more than 26,000km2 in the Bonaparte basin. Located close to its Bayu-Undan CCS project, the site could aid in the building of Santos’ Northern Australia and Timor-Leste CCS hub.
Commenting on the announcement, Kevin Gallagher, Managing Director, CEO, Santos, said that the permits build on the company’s CCS strategy and have the potential to yield additional CCS opportunities.
“CCS is critical for the world to reduce emissions and in line with Santos’ Net Zero scope 1 and 2 equity-share emissions by 2040 target, we are committed to looking at all options for CCS capabilities.”
“At Santos, we have the technology, infrastructure and knowledge to be able to deliver low-cost CCS competitively on a global scale. We know a large scale-up of CCS is required to meet the world’s climate objectives,” he added.
Capable of storing 100 million tonnes of CO2, the company’s first CCS project at Moomba is expected to be one of the biggest in the world when complete.
Climate saviour or not?
Despite being adopted by major energy players across the world, CCS technology may not be a climate saviour, according to a recently released report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
Read more: Carbon capture not a climate solution, says IEEFA
After studying the performance of 13 flagship large-scale CCS/CCUS projects, the study discovered that seven have drastically underperformed, two failed, and one was mothballed.
It also revealed that of the 39 million tonnes of CO2 that is captured annually from processing natural gas, industrial application and power generation, 73% is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), which increases the amount of CO2 produced.
Suggesting that more research should be done on CCS applications for hard-to-abate industry, Robertson added, “as a solution to tackling catastrophic rising emissions in its current framework however, CCS is not a climate solution.”