Gorgon Gas Liability Shared

In what can be read as confidence in the future of carbon capture and storage technologies, the Australian and Western Australian Governments have agreed to share liabilities on the gigantic Gorgon gas project.

A key aspect of Gorgon is a CCS plant to capture and sequester the carbon dioxide from the gas extraction plant. Some of the gas in the Greater Gorgon gas fields are known to be high in carbon dioxide. The plan is for it to be injected into a saline aquifer 2 kilometres under Barrow Island.

The issue that had to be addressed by the Governments in the AUD50 billion project is that the carbon dioxide will need to remain in the aquifer long after the 45 year project ends. With about 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide due to be sequestered per year – that’s more than 130 million tonnes over the project life – the long term liability is potentially enormous. So large in fact that had the liability guarantees not been provided, CarbonEdge understands the joint venture partners would have been unable to proceed.

Importantly, the Governments are only responsible after the closure of the active sequestration period. That is more than 40 years away. By that time, CCS technology might well be right. Gorgon will be world’s largest geological storage operation.

25th September 2009

 

RECENT ARTICLES

CarbonEdge Charts - August 10 (Subscribers Only)

03-06-10 Sustainability - are we getting there? (Subscriber's Only)

02-06-10 Making sense of the REC (Subscriber's Only)

CarbonEdge Charts - June 2010 (Subscribers Only)

08-04-10 Australian Energy Resource Assessment - the CarbonEdge Analysis (Subscriber's Only)

08-04-10 - Special Report - Biofuels technologies for Australia's energy future (Subscribers Only)

VIEW FULL ARCHIVE