A joint venture between Japan’s JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration and Australia’s deepC Store (dCS) has jointly bid for a permit offshore Australia to explore for potential carbon capture sites.
The duo revealed Wednesday they had executed a joint bidding agreement for a Greenhouse Gas Assessment Permit in Australia’s recent Greenhouse Gas Storage acreage release.
The pair did not reveal the exact location of the permit they had bid on, stating only that it was considered a suitable site for carbon dioxide storage they plan to capture from industrial sources in Australia, Japan and the Asia-Pacific region and transport to the site for storage.
JX Nippon has already been collaborating with dCS through a joint study agreement to carry out a feasibility study for capturing and transporting liquefied CO2 to an offshore floating carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub project, dubbed CStore1.
“The Greenhouse Gas Storage Acreage Release Area fits with the concept of CStore1 and we plan to evaluate the area as a potential CO2 injection site for CStore1,” JX Nippon said in Thursday’s announcement.
DCS claims its flagship Cstore1 development will be the first floating multi-user CCS hub in Australia and the Asia Pacific region, receiving and storing CO2 from multiple sources and industries.
The proposed project will look to capture between 1.5 million and 7.5 million tonnes per annum of CO2 from industrial sources.
The captured CO2 will then be liquefied and transported by ship to a CO2 floating storage and injection (FSI) hub facility offshore Australia, where it will then be injected via wells into a subsurface storage complex near the facility.
The CStore1 project design is also modular and scalable, allowing for additional CO2 carriers and FSI hub facilities that can be added into the network to rapidly increase injection capacity.
The agreement comes just weeks after dCS signed a joint study agreement to help decarbonise the operations of Japan’s largest steel producer, Nippon Steel Corporation.
“Following on from our agreement with Nippon Steel Corporation, we are committed to accelerate the development of CStore1 and advance Australia and Japan’s strategic alliance in the CCS business,” said dCS chairman Jack Sato.
The recently closed bid round was the first time since 2014 the Australian government had released acreage for greenhouse gas storage.
The round covered five areas off the coast of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, in the Bonaparte, Browse and Northern Carnarvon basins.
Last week, upstream industry body, the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA), claimed there had been “strong interest” in the acreage round following the closing of bids on 10 March.
