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 Australia’s largest carbon capture facility in waters off the Northern Territory, which climate campaigners say could turn Darwin into a carbon dump.

The Bonaparte carbon capture and storage (CCS) project proposes to channel and store 8 to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in an underground aquifer located about 250 km offshore west of Darwin, according to documents filed with the federal Department of the Environment.

Analysts said these volumes – if achieved – would make it one of the largest CCS projects in the world, while noting that most have failed to meet their targets.

The Bonaparte project, a joint venture between Inpex, TotalEnergies and Woodside Energy, consisted of sourcing CO₂ from “a range of industrial facilities in the region,” including nearby liquefied natural gas plants, and possibly imports from the Asia-Pacific. Carbon emissions would be transported offshore via a pipeline through Darwin Harbour.

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Environmentalists fear the project could be used to justify the continued expansion of fossil fuels in the territory.

Globally, 77 CCS projects are now operational, capturing around 64 million tonnes per year, according to an industry status report.

Josh Runciman, Australia’s leading gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said most CO emissions₂ captured by industry has been 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 had “significantly underperformed” and many had ceased operations 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 proposal would be much broader.

“A target of 10 million tonnes per year would make this the largest CCS project in the world,” Runciman said – but even assuming it hits those targets, that would only represent a “very small fraction” of CO2.₂ global emissions from oil and gas.

The Gorgon plant, which began injecting carbon dioxide in 2019, captured less than half of the volumes initially planned, at a cost of more than $200 per tonne, he said.

Inpex senior vice president Bill Townsend said the Bonaparte project “could make a substantial contribution to the decarbonisation of northern Australia and potentially the wider Indo-Pacific region”, adding that its “strategic importance in supporting the country’s net zero emissions targets was recognized in July this year, with the Australian Government granting it major project status”.

The Bonaparte project was one element of wider plans to convert Darwin’s Middle Arm peninsula into a carbon import and storage hub, with Dutch company Vopak separately developing a dedicated import terminal for liquefied CO.₂.

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

Bree Ahrens, head of the group’s climate campaign, said: “It’s a dirty business to import global pollution, and the Albanian government must exclude it. »

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

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