What was to be a showpiece for carbon capture and storage technology did not operate for the first three years of gas exports,and in the next three years has stored less CO2 each year.
However,Chevron exported a record 16.7 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas in the 12 months to June 2022,according to afiling with the WA environment regulator released last week.
Much of the increased production,1.1 million tonnes more than design capacity,would have attracted the high prices enjoyed by fossil fuel producers since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The US giant increased its revenue by boosting the reliability of its Gorgon gas plant. However,over the same two years performance of the adjacent CO2 injection facility fell from storing 68 per cent of the CO2 from the reservoirs to just 33 per cent.
The WA government allowed Chevron to build Gorgon on Barrow Island,a nature reserve,on the condition that it built a system capable of storing all the reservoir CO2 and achieved a minimum of 80 per cent storage.
Chevron and its partners – Shell,ExxonMobil and three Japanese utilities – have so far purchased 7.5 million tonnes of Australian and international carbon offsets to make up the shortfall from the 80 per cent target,a company spokesman said.
In 2022 the WA government added a requirement that Gorgon’s total emissions gradually reduce to zero by 2050 to its initial condition that all CO2 from the reservoirs be stored or buried.