{"id":323072,"date":"2025-12-02T16:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323072\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T16:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:12:09","slug":"worlds-largest-ccs-project-hits-new-low-on-amount-of-carbon-captured-and-stored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/323072\/","title":{"rendered":"World’s largest CCS project hits new low on amount of carbon captured and stored"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest data release from Chevron on its\u00a0Gorgon\u00a0carbon capture and storage (CCS)\u00a0project, the world\u2019s largest, shows the lowest amount of\u00a0carbon dioxide (CO2) captured and stored for a year since it started in\u00a0August\u00a02019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This matters, because CCS\u00a0has\u00a0been\u00a0promoted\u00a0as\u00a0a climate solution by the fossil fuel sector, which last year pumped a collective 37.8 billion tonnes of CO2\u00a0into the atmosphere. This puts\u00a0the world on a trajectory\u00a0to\u00a0reach a global average temperature rise of 2.6\u00b0C\u00a0above pre-industrial levels, according to\u00a0Climate Action Tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the oil and gas sector, one way\u00a0to\u00a0avoid this is to adopt CCS,\u00a0and governments should be putting taxpayer funds into this\u00a0\u201csolution.\u201d Proponents of CCS, often engineers, argue the technology\u2019s chequered history and litany of technical issues can\u00a0be overcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Gorgon CCS shows\u00a0no signs of improving;\u00a0its\u00a0performance\u00a0has declined significantly since\u00a0the\u00a0first year of operation, as the chart below shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To put\u00a0Gorgon\u00a0CCS\u2019s underperformance\u00a0into context,\u00a0the 1.33 million tonnes\u00a0(Mt)\u00a0of CO2\u00a0it\u00a0captured in\u00a0FY 2024-25 represents 25% of the\u00a0CO2\u00a0removed (5.22 Mt CO2) in that\u00a0period from the Gorgon and associated gas fields that feed the Gorgon LNG plant on Barrow Island\u00a0off Western Australia.\u00a0This is a\u00a0fraction\u00a0of the total greenhouse gas (GHG)\u00a0emissions\u00a0by\u00a0the gas produced at Gorgon.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chevron\u00a0is not obliged\u00a0to\u00a0disclose\u00a0the amount of\u00a0CO2\u00a0released into the atmosphere from its largest source of emissions:\u00a0when the gas is combusted by its customers\u00a0(or\u00a0Scope 3 emissions). This\u00a0makes up\u00a0about\u00a090% of the total emissions released by Gorgon\u00a0CCS\u00a0and\u00a0its associated\u00a0gas and LNG projects. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0in one of its Gorgon\u00a0CCS\u00a0planning documents<\/a>,\u00a0Chevron estimated\u00a0that if all the gas from the project\u00a0were\u00a0consumed at gas-powered generation stations in the\u00a0Asia-Pacific,\u00a0emissions\u00a0would\u00a0amount\u00a0to\u00a050 MtCO2\u00a0a year. Based on the assumptions in that scenario, Gorgon CCS captured just 2.66% of the total emissions from extracting,\u00a0processing\u00a0and burning gas from the Gorgon fields.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So even if Gorgon\u00a0were\u00a0working at its design rate of\u00a0capturing and storing\u00a04 Mt CO2\u00a0a year, it would still just amount to 8% of the total emissions\u00a0from the associated projects.\u00a0This\u00a0is\u00a0the case\u00a0for\u00a0any gas field promoting a CCS project,\u00a0such as Woodside\u2019s Browse gas project and\u00a0Inpex\u2019s\u00a0Bonaparte CCS project. The latter\u00a0is\u00a0slated\u00a0to host\u00a0some of\u00a0the\u00a0CO2\u00a0from\u00a0Inpex\u2019s\u00a0Ichthys gas project in the Browse\u00a0Basin\u00a0in the Timor Sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nonetheless,\u00a0Gorgon CCS\u00a0remains\u00a0a bellwether for the CCS sector.\u00a0Despite\u00a0the\u00a0relatively\u00a0small\u00a0amounts\u00a0of\u00a0CO2\u00a0it captures,\u00a0it still\u00a0represents\u00a0a significant\u00a0proportion\u00a0of the world\u2019s\u00a0dedicated CCS projects. The Global CCS Institute\u2019s\u00a0(GCCSI)\u00a0annual report<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0the status of CCS around the world\u00a0does not provide\u00a0data on\u00a0how much\u00a0CO2 is captured each year, only\u00a0projects\u2019\u00a0nameplate capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As\u00a0is\u00a0evident\u00a0at\u00a0Gorgon CCS,\u00a0it stored\u00a0only\u00a0about one-third of its annual\u00a0target\u00a0capacity in\u00a0FY2024-25.\u00a0Trawling through the dedicated CCS projects\u00a0in the GCCSI annual report,\u00a0the total\u00a0CO2 stored by the world\u2019s CCS projects\u00a0is little more than 10MtCO2\u00a0a year or 0.00026% of\u00a0global\u00a0fossil fuel emissions.<\/p>\n

(Note:\u00a0CCS\u00a0is\u00a0distinct from\u00a0CCUS\u00a0projects;\u00a0the U stands for\u00a0the\u00a0utilisation of\u00a0captured\u00a0CO2\u00a0to squeeze more oil out of the ground, also known as enhanced oil recovery.)<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0unlikely\u00a0to find any mention of these\u00a0facts\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0oil and gas sector\u00a0narrative, which\u00a0promotes\u00a0CCS\u00a0as a\u00a0solution to reduce\u00a0the industry\u2019s\u00a0emissions\u00a0and\u00a0justify opening new gas reserves.<\/p>\n

Yet there are\u00a0more\u00a0economical\u00a0ways to reduce global emissions.\u00a0The costs\u00a0of solar PV and storing electricity through grid-scale batteries\u00a0have come down sharply\u00a0in\u00a0the nine years since Chevron started building Gorgon CCS.\u00a0This year, renewables\u00a0overtook\u00a0coal for the first time in generating electricity\u00a0whereas\u00a0the costs of\u00a0CCS\u00a0and its technical challenges\u00a0remain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kevin Morrison is an LNG and gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest data release from Chevron on its\u00a0Gorgon\u00a0carbon capture and storage (CCS)\u00a0project, the world\u2019s largest, shows the lowest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-323072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}