The Barossa Gas Project, a gas and condensate field in the Arafura Sea, 285 kilometres north-west of Darwin, will backfill Santos-operated Darwin LNG at Wickham Point.

The first gas is expected to be produced in the third quarter of this year.

Barossa is replacing supply from the Bayu-Undan field
in Timor-Leste waters.

The $4.7 billion project created 600 jobs during construction and 350 during operation.

Natural gas, water and condensate will be processed at a floating facility.

The natural gas will then be transported through a gas pipeline for onshore processing at Darwin LNG.

Condensate will be transferred to specialised tankers and exported to Japan.

Another exciting Santos initiative is running in tandem with the backfilling of Darwin LNG – the Moomba carbon capture and storage project in South Australia’s Cooper Basin.

It started up in October 2024 and at year end had already stored 340,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. It has now stored more than 500,000 tonnes of CO2.

At full injection rates, Moomba CCS avoids more CO2 in four days than 10,000 electric vehicles save in one year.

And in just one year, it will achieve about 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 – the emissions reduction equivalent to taking 700,000 petrol-fuelled cars off the road each year.

It 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.

Santos Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gallagher says Moomba CCS is delivering immediate and real large-scale emissions reduction.

“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.”

He says the Cooper and adjacent Eromanga basins alone have potential for injection of up to 20 million tonnes 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.

Mr Gallagher says 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.

“We have made history out at Moomba,” he says. “In bringing this project to fruition, I believe we have started an incredible new chapter in Australia’s energy transition, which will lead us to become a carbon capture and storage superpower.

“The scale CCS offers is a gamechanger for decarbonisation in Australia.

“Policymakers should seize the opportunity to deploy CCS to reduce emissions faster, at scale and cost competitively – particularly when Australia has a unique and natural advantage in carbon capture and storage.”

Leading global energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates that Australia could unlock up to $600 billion in revenue by creating a CCS industry and becoming a storage hub for the Asia-Pacific region.

“This is a real industry opportunity for Australia,” Mr Gallagher says. “It’s an opportunity to create real jobs of the future that are skilled, well-paid and secure.”

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

There are 50 projects in operation globally today, capturing more than 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year, and about 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.

“Emissions are the enemy and if we are serious about achieving net zero, we must recognise the importance of abating emissions from the production and use of hydrocarbons,” Mr Gallagher says.

Only three of the 50 technologies that the International Energy Agency says are critical to net-
zero are on track today – solar PV, electric vehicles and lighting.

“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 says. TQ