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The company had committed to developing a system capable of storing all the reservoir CO₂ and as a minimum “implement all practicable means” to bury at least 80 per cent.
Gorgon emits about five million tonnes of CO₂ from burning gas to power the plant that is not captured for storage.
The plant,Australia’s biggest carbon polluter,began exporting gas in 2016 but no CO₂ was injected for more than three years while equipment was modified to stop the system corroding.
There was some success in 2020 until a WA regulator imposed a slowdown on the $3.2 billion system after pressure underground rose to worrying levels. Chevron was not extracting water fast enough from the formation two kilometres underground to make room for the CO₂.
“We just flat out didn’t drill enough water producing wells,” Chevron Australia managing director Mark Hatfield told the conference King also spoke at.
In order to continue to use and explore for gas to support the energy transition we need CCS to work. It’s that simple
Resources Minister Madeleine King
A company spokesman said it would start drilling the new wells next year.
Hatfield said Chevron had some of its smartest and brightest working on the problem.
“That thing is going to work,and it’s going to be something we’re all proud of,” he said.
Chevron is not the only exporter of Australian gas wanting carbon storage to work.
Last week Senator Penny Wong berated the opposition after it failed to support legislation to allow the transport of carbon dioxide across national boundaries for storage.
“You said no to Santos,you then said no to Woodside,you’ve said no to Inpex,” she said.
Like Chevron,all three companies want to store CO₂ from their gas fields,but with the added difficulty of using offshore reservoirs deep under the ocean.
The legislation before the Senate would allow Santos to move CO₂ from the Barossa project it is constructing north of Darwin to a near-emptied gas field in Timor-Leste waters.
Last week Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill said it would not progress its $US20.5 billion Browse project withoutstoring the high CO₂ content in the gas fields.
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Japan’s Inpex,that operates Australia’s second-biggest carbon polluter the Ichthys gas project,is investigating carbon storage off the coast of the Northern Territory.
Robertson,who in 2022 reviewed theperformance of CCS projects around the world,said most did not perform well.
“The fundamental problem with the technology is that no one can tell you exactly what’s going on underground,” he said.
The other weakness of CCS for gas plants was that it only stored some of the emissions from producing the gas and none of the far greater volume of carbon pollution from customers burning the gas.
On Monday evening the Coalition joined Labor and voted in the Senate to pass the carbon storage legislation.
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