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CO2CRC is pleased to welcome Santos Limited as its newest member company.

CO2CRC CEO, David Byers, said “Santos is an Australian natural gas company and one of the leading LNG producers in the Asia-Pacific region with a strong commitment to a lower carbon future. It has a deep heritage in the Cooper Basin in South Australia where it is exploring the opportunity for large scale commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS), with potential injection capacity of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year for 50 years, providing safe and permanent sequestration for a billion tonnes of CO₂.

“We are delighted to have such a strong industry leader join CO2CRC and contribute to our research and development program. We are particularly keen to work with Santos to progress suitable policy settings and a regulatory framework to accelerate the development and deployment of CCS technology in Australia.”

Santos Managing Director and CEO, Kevin Gallagher, said that CCS has the potential to create a new wealth-generating industry for Australia, breathe new life into existing industries and underpin the development of new energies such as hydrogen.

“Australia has the potential to be a leader in CCS, built on the availability of vast, high quality storage reservoirs; the technology, expertise and infrastructure of the oil and gas industry; and a strong reputation for the integrity of our environmental regulation, carbon accounting and financial services.

“Santos’ operations in the Cooper Basin are perfectly positioned for CCS deployment. We have a strong infrastructure footprint that we can leverage, including our Moomba gas plant, and depleted reservoirs in the basin that have the ability to safely store CO₂ in the same rocks which have safely kept hydrocarbons in place for the last 85 million years.

“The Cooper Basin has potential injection capacity of 20 million tonnes of CO₂ per year for 50 years, providing safe and permanent sequestration. Santos has taken FEED on a 1.7 million tonnes of CO₂per year CCS project and our goal is to be ready to take a final investment decision by the end of 2020. Initially the project will store 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. With the right policy settings and regulatory framework, the Cooper Basin could become a large-scale commercial hub capturing emissions from a range of industries.

“By collaborating with CO2CRC, we are furthering our commitment to carbon capture and storage as a vital emissions reduction technology which will need to account for more than two billion tonnes of CO₂ sequestration every year by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency,” said Santos CEO, Kevin Gallagher.

CO2CRC is one of the world’s leading CCS research organisations, having invested more than A$125 million to develop and deliver better and more cost-effective technologies for CCS. As owner and operator of the Otway ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Research Facility, CO2CRC commissions and undertakes research projects with partners worldwide.

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