<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-largest-ccs-project-hits-new-low-on-amount-of-carbon-captured-and-stored/>
"The latest data release from Chevron on its Gorgon carbon capture and storage
(CCS) project, the world’s largest, shows the lowest amount of carbon dioxide
(CO₂) captured and stored for a year since it started in August 2019.
This matters, because CCS has been promoted as a climate solution by the fossil
fuel sector, which last year pumped a collective 37.8 billion tonnes of CO₂
into the atmosphere. This puts the world on a trajectory to reach a global
average temperature rise of 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels, according to
Climate Action Tracker.
According to the oil and gas sector, one way to avoid this is to adopt CCS, and
governments should be putting taxpayer funds into this “solution.” Proponents
of CCS, often engineers, argue the technology’s chequered history and litany of
technical issues can be overcome.
But Gorgon CCS shows no signs of improving; its performance has declined
significantly since the first year of operation, as the chart below shows.
To put Gorgon CCS’s underperformance into context, the 1.33 million tonnes (Mt)
of CO₂ it captured in FY 2024-25 represents 25% of the CO₂ removed (5.22 Mt
CO₂) in that period from the Gorgon and associated gas fields that feed the
Gorgon LNG plant on Barrow Island off Western Australia. This is a fraction of
the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the gas produced at Gorgon.
Chevron is not obliged to disclose the amount of CO₂ released into the
atmosphere from its largest source of emissions: when the gas is combusted by
its customers (or Scope 3 emissions). This makes up about 90% of the total
emissions released by Gorgon CCS and its associated gas and LNG projects.
However, in one of its Gorgon CCS planning documents, Chevron estimated that if
all the gas from the project were consumed at gas-powered generation stations
in the Asia-Pacific, emissions would amount to 50 Mt CO₂ a year. Based on the
assumptions in that scenario, Gorgon CCS captured just 2.66% of the total
emissions from extracting, processing and burning gas from the Gorgon fields.
So even if Gorgon were working at its design rate of capturing and storing 4 Mt
CO₂ a year, it would still just amount to 8% of the total emissions from the
associated projects. This is the case for any gas field promoting a CCS
project, such as Woodside’s Browse gas project and Inpex’s Bonaparte CCS
project. The latter is slated to host some of the CO₂ from Inpex’s Ichthys gas
project in the Browse Basin in the Timor Sea."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
