Outback SA carbon capture project comes online
A $335 million SA carbon capture and storage project at Moomba operated by Santos has been brought online, 17 years after it was first announced.
Santos and Beach Energy yesterday announced the $335 million Moomba Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility was now online.
Announced back in 2007, the South Australian oil and gas giants partnered to build the facility which captures carbon dioxide as a by-product of gas production and stores it underground in depleted gas wells.
The facility is adjacent to Santos’ Moomba Gas Plant in the state’s north east, and has the potential to initially capture and store approximately 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
At its full potential, Santos said the project could capture and store up to 20 million tonnes of CO2 every year for 50 years.
The 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 is “equivalent to delivering – every year – about 28 per cent of the total emissions reduction achieved in Australia’s electricity sector last year”, Santos said.
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The project is co-owned by South Australia’s largest company Santos, which holds 66.6 per cent of the operation, and Beach Energy – ranked third in the 2024 SA Business Index – which owns the remainder.
The CCS facility pumps captured carbon into underground, depleted oil wells. Photo: Santos.
The Moomba CCS facility is the second operational commercial-scale project of its type in Australia, following the completion of the Gorgon CCS project in Western Australia which is managed by Chevron.
ExxonMobil and Woodside Petroleum’s Gippsland CCS project is expected to come online in 2025 and will be the third of its kind nationally.
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According to the Australian Energy Council, CCS projects have been operating since 1972 in the United States where Texan gas companies captured and stored CO2 underground. Further, the organisation says there are currently 700 CCS projects in various stages of development globally, with 45 operational.
Santos yesterday said technology and reservoir performance was in line with expectations, and the company expects to inject approximately 250,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2024.
“The successful startup of Moomba CCS phase one is a potential game-changer not only for Santos, but for hard-to-abate industries across Australia,” Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said.
“With a lifecycle cost under US$30 per tonne of CO2, CCS can no longer be ignored. This is a real carbon management industry opportunity for Australia, generating real jobs that are high-skilled, long-term and well-paying in South Australia.
“Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator and South Australia’s Department for Energy and Mining are world-class regulators implementing international standards, thereby giving confidence in the integrity of measurement, monitoring, verification and carbon credit generation.”
Gallagher said there was “strong customer interest” in the Moomba project, noting the company had recently signed a series of agreements with third parties such as Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Primary Metals.
“This provides strong momentum for Moomba CCS phase two as a commercial service,” he said.
Beach Energy managing director and CEO Brett Woods said that the commissioning of Moomba CCS was a “pivotal moment in Australia’s emissions reduction journey”.
“At full rates, Moomba CCS will safely store all vented reservoir CO2 from the Moomba Gas Plant and will abate approximately one-third of Beach’s current equity emissions,” Woods said.
“It is widely accepted that natural gas will play a critical role in the energy transition and that CCS is a necessary enabler for low emissions energy supply. The International Energy Agency has stated that it will be near impossible to reach net zero by 2025 without CCS.
“Thanks to Beach’s significant investment in Moomba CCS, we are now well on track to reach our targeted net Scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity reduction of 35 per cent by 2030.”
