MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Australian government picked six carbon capture, use and storage projects on Monday to receive a total of AD50 million (USD39 million) in funds as it looks to accelerate development of the technology to cut emissions, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Carbon capture has been tested for years but is gaining momentum as the International Energy Agency and others see it as essential to helping the world achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Australia's gas producers see carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way of keeping gas in the mix amid the transition to cleaner energy, potentially linking carbon credits from CCS to their gas exports and using gas to produce hydrogen, with the carbon released in the process captured and stored.
The conservative government has made it a priority area for technology investment. Canberra received applications to support AD1.2 billion of investment in CCS projects, Energy Minister Angus Taylor said. Australia's no.2 independent gas producer Santos Ltd and its partner Beach Energy won AD15 million for their AD210 million Moomba CCS project, which will initially store 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year in depleted oil and gas fields in the Cooper Basin in South Australia.
Santos expects to make a final investment decision on the project later this year, after the government spells out a methodology for CCS projects to generate carbon credits, which the company said was "essential to make the project stack up economically".
Glencore plc won up to AD5 million for the AD210 million CTSCo project, which plans to capture carbon emissions at a coal-fired power plant and store it deep underground in the Surat Basin in Queensland. If proven to be safe and sustainable, the Surat Basin could hold "very sizeable" volumes of CO2 and store emissions from a range of industries, a Glencore spokesperson said. Three of the projects plan to demonstrate capture and use of carbon dioxide in making construction materials like concrete, masonry and plasterboard.
As per MRC, Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co Ltd said it would invest in the development of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Britain. The Japanese company will take a 15.4% share in Storegga Geotechnologies which is developing the Acorn CCS project to store carbon dioxide emissions in depleted North Sea oil and gas reservoirs. CCS traps emissions and buries them underground but is not yet at the commercialisation stage.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC