Santos joins CO2CRC

CO2CRC
Well construction of the CCS project at CO2CRC’s Otway Research Facility

CO2CRC has announced Santos is its newest member company, working towards sequestering a billion tonnes of CO2 over 50 years.

CO2CRC CEO David Byers said Santos is one of the leading LNG producers in the Asia-Pacific region with a strong commitment to a lower carbon future.

“It has a deep heritage in the Cooper Basin in South Australia where it is exploring the opportunity for large scale commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS), with potential injection capacity of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year for 50 years, providing safe and permanent sequestration for a billion tonnes of CO2,” Mr Byers said.

“We are delighted to have such a strong industry leader join CO2CRC and contribute to our research and development program. We are particularly keen to work with Santos to progress suitable policy settings and a regulatory framework to accelerate the development and deployment of CCS technology in Australia.” 

Santos managing director and CEO Kevin Gallagher said that CCS has the potential to create a new wealth-generating industry for Australia, breathe new life into existing industries and underpin the development of new energies such as hydrogen.

“Australia has the potential to be a leader in CCS, built on the availability of vast, high-quality storage reservoirs; the technology, expertise and infrastructure of the oil and gas industry; and a strong reputation for the integrity of our environmental regulation, carbon accounting and financial services.

“Santos’ operations in the Cooper Basin are perfectly positioned for CCS deployment. We have a strong infrastructure footprint that we can leverage, including our Moomba gas plant, and depleted reservoirs in the basin that have the ability to safely store CO2 in the same rocks which have safely kept hydrocarbons in place for the last 85 million years.”

CO2CRC is a CCS research organisation that has invested more than A$125 million to develop and deliver better and more cost-effective technologies for CCS. As owner and operator of the Otway National Research Facility, CO2CRC commissions and undertakes research projects with partners worldwide.

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