Plan for Australia’s largest carbon capture project near Darwin criticised as creating ‘dumping ground’ | Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Oil and gas giant Inpex has proposed the largest carbon capture facility in the waters off Australia’s Northern Territory; climate advocates have warned this could turn Darwin into a carbon dump.

The Bonaparte carbon capture and storage (CCS) project proposes to pipeline and store 8 to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO).₂) an underground aquifer located approximately 250 km offshore from Darwin, according to submitted documents with the federal environmental department.

While analysts said that if these volumes were reached, the project would become one of the largest CCS projects in the world, they stated that most of them did not reach their targets.

The Bonaparte project, a joint venture between Inpex, TotalEnergies and Woodside Energy, involved the supply of CO₂ imports from “a number of industrial facilities in the region”, including nearby liquefied natural gas facilities, and eventually from Asia Pacific. Carbon emissions will be transported offshore via a pipeline through the port of Darwin.

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Environmentalists have expressed concern that the project could be used to justify further expansion of fossil fuels in the region.

Globally, 77 CCS projects According to the industry status report, they were currently in operation, catching approximately 64 million tons per year.

Josh Runciman, a leading Australian gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said most CO₂ The oil captured by the industry was used for enhanced oil recovery, a way to extract more oil and gas from reservoirs.

In practice, he said, most CCS projects designed solely to capture and store carbon dioxide “dramatically underperformed” and many were shut down earlier than planned.

Australia now had two commercial-scale CCS projects: Santos’ Moomba project in South Australia and Chevron’s Gorgon facility in Western Australia. Inpex’s offer would be much larger.

“The target of 10 million tonnes per year would make this the largest CCS project worldwide,” Runciman said; But even assuming it achieves these targets, this would still be a “very small fraction” of CO2.₂ Global emissions from oil and gas.

The Gorgon plant, which started injecting carbon dioxide in 2019, captured less than half the volume it originally intended, at a cost of more than $200 per tonne, he said.

The Guardian contacted Inpex for comment but did not receive a response. In July, the company’s chief executive Tetsu Murayama said in a statement: “The Bonaparte CCS project could significantly contribute to the decarbonisation of northern Australia and potentially the wider Indo-Pacific region.”

The Bonaparte project was a component of larger plans to turn Darwin’s Middle Arm Peninsula into a hub for carbon import and storage; Dutch company Vopak was also developing a dedicated import terminal for liquefied CO.₂.

Environment Center NT said the proposals risked turning the Top End into the “world’s largest carbon dump”.

Bree Ahrens, the group’s senior climate campaigner, said: “This is a dirty deal to import the world’s pollution and the Albanian Government needs to stamp it out.”

The environmental organization has raised concerns that CCS is being used to launder a massive increase in gas production in the Northern Territory.

“Carbon capture and storage is just an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to keep mining coal and gas while pretending to care about climate change.