Cosmo Energy taps Chiyoda for Chiba refinery CCS project study
Cosmo Energy Holdings Co. Ltd.’s Cosmo Oil Co. Ltd. has let a contract to Chiyoda Corp. to evaluate the potential for implementing infrastructure designed to separate and capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the operator’s 177,000-b/d refinery in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
Under the Nov. 22 contract, Chiyoda will conduct a feasibility study examining designs for installations aimed at separating and capturing CO2 emissions at the Chiba refinery as part of a larger program under way by Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) to advance commercialization of a Japanese carbon capture and storage (CCS) value chain, the service provider said.
Chiyoda said its scope of work on the study will involve estimating costs, identifying key risks, and verifying the feasibility of socially implementing CCS at the refinery.
While Chiyoda revealed no further details of the contract, award of the feasibility study at the Chiba refinery follows JOGMEC’s earlier open call for “Engineering Design Work for Advanced CCS Projects in FY2024” under which nine proposed Japanese advanced CCS projects for priority support across the domestic industrial sector to help the government of Japan achieve its target of 6-12 million tonnes/year (tpy) of CO2 storage by 2030, according to a late-July 2024 release from JOGMEC.
The proposed Chiba study specifically comes as part of JOGMEC’s selection of the Northern Offshore of Peninsular Malaysia (NOPM) CCS project that—alongside Cosmo’s refinery—will include similar studies for CO2 separation and capturing, liquefaction, transportation, and storage at industrial operations owned by Mitsubishi Corp., ENEOS Corp., JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp., JFE Steel Corp., Nippon Shokubai Co.Ltd., and PETRONAS CCS Solutions Sdn. Bhd. to meet the project’s goal of advancing construction of an overseas CCS value chain based on CO2 emissions from various industries in the Tokyo Bay area.
Per separate descriptions of the proposed plan from JOGMEC and Cosmo, the NOPM CCS project collectively aims to separate, capture, liquefy, transport (via ship and pipeline) about 3 million tpy—and potentially up to 6 million tpy— of CO2 from Tokyo Bay-area industrial operations to Petronas-owned depleted oil and gas fields in Peninsular Malaysia’s northern offshore area.
Cosmo is also involved in a second CCS project selected by JOGMEC for priority support that would involve similar CCS implementation at the operator’s 100,000-b/d refinery at Sakai in Japan’s Osaka prefecture.
Known as the Southern Offshore of Peninsular Malaysia (SOPM) CCS project, this second JOGMEC-supported potential option would enable separating, capturing, liquefying, transporting (via ship and pipeline) about 5 million tpy of CO2 from multiple scalable CO2 clusters across industries in western Japan to the overseas Petronas-operated carbon-storage hub in Peninsular Malaysia’s southern offshore for permanent sequestration, according to JOGMEC.
In addition to Cosmo, other Japanese companies with industrial operations in the region participating in the SOPM CCS project include Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Chugoku Electric Power Co. Inc., Kansai Electric Power Co. Inc., Electric Power Development Co. Ltd., Kyushu Electric Power Co. Inc., Resonac Corp., and Mitsubishi UBE Cement Corp., according to JOGMEC.
In its second-quarter fiscal 2024 results released on Nov. 12, Cosmo said it will continue studying options for establishing the necessary value chains for commercializing both NOPM and SOPM CCS projects in hopes of reaching final investment decision by 2026 for anticipated startup by 2030.
Robert Brelsford | Downstream Editor
Robert Brelsford joined Oil & Gas Journal in October 2013 as downstream technology editor after 8 years as a crude oil price and news reporter on spot crude transactions at the US Gulf Coast, West Coast, Canadian, and Latin American markets. He holds a BA (2000) in English from Rice University and an MS (2003) in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
