Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company said it has blocked a technical assessment by Norwegian and US classification societies for the carbon storage and shipping units it is developing with Mitsui OSK Lined Ltd.
Det Norsk Veritas AS approved a short-haul LCO2 vessel with a capacity of 494,405.33 cubic feet and a long-haul LCO2 carrier that can hold up to 307,237.6 cubic feet. “The other two AiP [approvals in principle] of the ABS [American Bureau of Shipping] are for an 87,000 m3 LCO2 carrier with dynamic positioning system and a 96,000 m3 LCO2 FSO [floating storage offloading unit] for intermediate storage,” Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) said in a press release last week.
“The 14,000 m3 LCO2 carrier is currently the world’s largest design with AiP for medium temperature and medium pressure conditions, while the 87,000 m3 LCO2 carrier and the 96,000 m3 LCO2 FSO are currently the largest designs grains in the world with AiP for low-temperature and low-temperature conditions.”
“The AiPs indicate that the classification societies have reviewed and approved the basic design of the LCO2 carriers as well as the FSO as meeting the technical requirements and safety criteria,” he said.
“The achievement of the AiPs further reinforces PETRONAS’ commitment to deliver decarbonisation solutions, aligned with our aspiration to establish Malaysia as a leading CCS. [carbon capture and storage] hub in the region,” commented Petronas Chief Executive Officer for Upstream Adif Zulkifli.
Nobuo Shiotsu, MOL’s senior executive director, said: “Large-scale development is an essential step for the CCS value chain in the Asia Pacific and Oceania region.”
Also last week TotalEnergies SE announced agreements with Petronas and Mitsui to create a carbon storage facility for Asian customers and build a solar farm to serve Australia.
One of the two deals is for a “commercial storage service” of CO2 that would serve the Asian industrial sector. “The partners will evaluate various CO2 storage sites in the Malaysia Basin, including saline aquifers and depleted marine fields,” the French multinational said in a press release.
In the other agreement, the clean energy unit of TotalEnergies and Petronas plans to develop renewable energy projects in Asia-Pacific. One of them will be a 100 megawatt solar farm in the Australian state of Queensland that aims to supply electricity to the Roma gas field.
The partnership with Gentari Renewables Sendirian Bhd “further strengthens TotalEnergies’ partnership with Petronas in the energy transition” with an upward partnership already forged for eight countries, TotalEnergies said in a separate media release .
“The 100 MW Pleasant Hills solar project, which will contribute to reducing Gladstone LNG’s emissions, is a first material implementation of this agreement,” said Julien Pouget, senior vice president of exploration and production and renewables in Asia-Pacific at TotalEnergies.
Gentari CEO Sushil Purohit noted: “To achieve our joint decarbonisation goals, it is critical to leverage all of our capabilities, capacity and resources efficiently. This includes optimizing our existing partnerships and working to decarbonise our own business entities”.
CCS Prospects in Asia-Pacific
TotEnergies, however, said that CCS development in the Asia-Pacific faces regulatory and financing challenges: “In Asia, where countries such as South Korea and Japan have committed to the Net Zero Commitment by 2050, the development of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) value chain for difficult-to-reduce industrial emissions will require a specific regulatory framework and significant investment”.
Most governments in the region have only recently recognized the value of the sector in driving investment, Wood Mackenzie said in a report last year.
“Governments and oil and gas producers in Asia Pacific often see CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage] as a single-project carbon solution,” the Energy Market Advisory Group wrote on October 3, 2022. “This is very different in scale and ambition to Europe and North America, where policy and investment are moving towards larger and more complex CCUS malls. “.
An International Energy Agency report in 2021 said that in Southeast Asia policies to facilitate CCS investment have not yet been developed.
But the outlook for the sector’s potential in Asia-Pacific is optimistic.
“In Wood Mackenzie’s AET-1.5 grade scenario [accelerated energy transition scenario]Asia Pacific represents approximately 50% of CCUS’s global capacity,” said WoodMac.
For Southeast Asia, estimates indicate that carbon storage capacity could exceed the region’s needs, as depleting oil and gas reserves present large-scale opportunities, according to the IEA.
TotalEnergies said its carbon storage project with Petronas aims to use “the best technical means to deliver CO2 to Malaysia from industrial clusters in the region and develop the most appropriate business framework for the commercialization of a carbon storage in Malaysia”.
“We will bring our strong CCS to the association [carbon capture and storage] experience, anchored in Europe with a first integrated project in Norway starting next year and several other projects that will contribute to our goal of carbon storage capacity of 10 million tons per year by 2030,” said Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies.
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