Santos Ltd., Adelaide, is expecting a final investment decision (FID) for its proposed carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Moomba in South Australia by September.
The company’s chief executive officer, Kevin Gallagher, mentioned the target date as part of a company year-end results presentation and noted that Santos is waiting for the South Australian government and the Clean Energy Regulator to establish an appropriate carbon trading scheme.
FID on the Moomba project is awaiting the methodology statement that will support accreditation of CCS projects, he said. An FID before that would eliminate the possibility of the project being eligible for carbon credit.
The project aims to capture 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 that is currently separated from the natural gas stream at the Moomba gas plant each year. The CO2 will be reinjected into the same geological formations in the Cooper basin that reservoir the oil and gas resources in the region.
A final reinjection trial of 100 tonnes of CO2 into depleted Cooper basin reservoirs was successfully completed in October 2020.
Gallagher said the Cooper basin can take up to 20 million tonnes/year of CO2 for the next 50 years.
