A prominent energy economics research body says the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project is capturing less than half of the emissions it claimed. Zach Szumer has the story.
Chevron’s much-heralded and world’s largest Gorgon Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) project is storing less than half of the carbon it did four years ago, slipping far under rising targets, according to new data. It currently captures about 30% of the C02 it removed from its reservoir, new research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) shows.
The Western Australian project was approved on the condition of capturing an average of 80 per cent per year of the C02 over five years.
CREDIT: Chevron, IEEFA analysis
Since it began injecting C02 in mid-2019, about three years behind schedule, it’s averaged 47 % per year.
IEEFA attributes the shortfall to issues related to reservoir pressure but says these technical challenges are not unique to the Gorgon project.
A 2022 IEEFA study of 13 CCS projects around the world found only three had achieved their targets.
The cost per tonne of C02 captured at Gorgon had risen from an estimated $70 to over $200, IEEFA says, mainly due to rising capital costs.
This could be bad news for Western Australia, which has just released plans for the state to become a “world leader” in CCS. Its action plan cites the Gorgon project as an example of how the state is tapping into a global trend and is poised to attract new CCS investment.
However, the issues at Gorgon “cast doubt on the financial viability” of CCS, IEEFA says. The research body estimates that CCS projects around the world currently store around 10 million tonnes of carbon, while emissions from coal, oil and gas hit a record high of 37.4 billion tonnes in 2023, the International Energy Agency estimated.
IEEFA says, “Investors and governments should consider the risks associated with CCS projects carefully before allocating funds to those projects.”
Questions for Santos
IEEFA made special mention of Santos’ Bayu-Undan project, off the coast of the Northern Territory, which it said was “much more complex” than Gorgon. C02 stored there has to travel through almost 800km of pipelines, while at Gorgon, it only faces a 7km journey.
Planning documents for storing carbon at Bayu-Undan are yet to be submitted but the company has said that it intends to formally approve the project in 2025 and begin pumping C02 into it in 2028.
In October, IEEFA demanded Santos demonstrate “how it will meet its targets given CCS’s history of underperformance, including at Chevron’s Gorgon project.”
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However, another Santos CCS project – Moomba in South Australia – started operating in October and is currently reducing the emissions of its adjacent gas plant by “more than 50 %,” according to a recent investor presentation. The pipeline at Moomba is 55km long.
The company is “extremely proud of the performance to date of the first phase of Moomba CCS”, Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher recently said.
Energy analyst Kevin Morrison – one of the authors of IEEFA’s Gorgon report – agreed, “It’s good Moomba has finally come on – Santos has been talking about this for over 15 years.”
“Let’s measure the C02 when the official statistics come out because there’s been all sorts of claims made about lots of the CCS projects around the world,
and when you dig into it, none of them really stack up”.
Morrison cited recent reports that suggest the much-heralded Sleipner CCS project in Norway has overestimated CCS storage by up to a third.
Both Chevron and Santos were contacted for comment but did not respond before deadline.
Editor: and by the way … we are subsidising
Zacharias Szumer is a freelance writer from Melbourne. In addition to Michael West Media, he has written for The Monthly, Overland, Jacobin, The Quietus, The South China Morning Post and other outlets.
He was also responsible for our War Power Reforms series.