Moomba CCS a decisive step in Australia’s journey to becoming a CCS superpower

At full injection rates Moomba CCS avoids more CO2 in four days than 10,000 electric vehicles save in one year. In just one year, Moomba CCS will achieve around 28 per cent of the total emissions reduction achieved by Australia’s entire electricity sector in 2023.

The technology and reservoir is performing as expected, putting Moomba CCS on track to safely and permanently sequester up to 1.7 million tonnes per annum of CO2e, depending on CO2 availability.

Moomba CCS is Australia’s first large-scale onshore carbon capture and storage project, storing CO2 in the same geological reservoirs that have held oil and gas in place for tens of millions of years.

Moomba CCS is delivering immediate and real large-scale emissions reduction for the company and for Australia at a very competitive lifecycle cost.

The project is providing a real confidence boost for the potential of CCS technology to help Australia reach Net Zero and decarbonise faster, at scale and affordably.

The Cooper/Eromanga Basins alone have the potential for injection of up to 20 Mt of CO2e per year for up to 50 years. Australia has a natural competitive advantage in CCS with known high-quality, stable geological storage basins capable of injection at a rate of 300 million tonnes per annum for at least 100 years.

Santos CEO and Managing Director Kevin Gallagher said the safe start-up and operation of Moomba CCS was the culmination of Santos’ 70 years of innovation and dedication to serving the Australian community with reliable and affordable energy, and now, cutting-edge decarbonisation solutions.

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero by 2050 scenario assumes almost 60 per cent of the world’s gas demand would be served with abated gas through carbon capture and storage, contributing to the almost 6 billion tonnes of CO2 being captured and stored per year by 2050.

There are 50 projects in operation globally today, capturing over 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year and around 630 CCS projects in the development pipeline, up 60 per cent year-on-year.

Despite global decarbonisation efforts, greenhouse gas emissions and hydrocarbon consumption have not yet peaked.

CCS is the one technology with real potential to abate emissions at scale and that’s why projects like Moomba CCS are so important to help make Net Zero a reality,” Mr Gallagher said.