Woodside Power has proposed burying 4m tonnes of CO2 a 12 months from its multibillion-dollar Browse mission in undersea storage off the coast of Western Australia.
The federal atmosphere division revealed the offshore carbon seize and storage (CCS) plans on 2 January for 2 weeks of public session earlier than it determines whether or not the proposal requires an environmental evaluation.
The federal and WA Greens have criticised the timing of the session through the summer time vacation interval and known as on the federal government to increase it.
The social gathering’s federal atmosphere spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Younger, mentioned the proposal was “nothing but greenwashing” of the numerous emissions the Browse mission would trigger. She known as on the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to “rule out all polluting projects in this pristine ecosystem” on his go to to WA this week.
“Dumping carbon pollution under Scott Reef would put already endangered species like the green sea turtle, pygmy blue whale and the dusky sea snake at serious risk,” she mentioned.
Browse is Australia’s largest untapped gasoline subject. Woodside’s gasoline mission would contain drilling wells inside about 3km of the Scott coral reef system and piping gasoline 900km for processing on the North West Shelf LNG processing plant at Karratha, on the Indigenous heritage-rich Burrup peninsula. It expects it to ship 11.4m tonnes of LNG a 12 months.
An organization spokesperson mentioned it believed “a CCS solution” was a possible choice to abate greenhouse gasoline emissions from the Browse reservoir.
Woodside’s submission to the division seeks approval to “develop the infrastructure to transport, inject and permanently sequester” as much as 3-4m tonnes of CO2 a 12 months within the Calliance storage formation about 4km beneath sea degree and a whole lot of kilometres off the coast of Broome.
Woodside claims its proposal would cut back the whole scope 1 – or direct – emissions from the Browse to North West Shelf mission by 47% (about 53m tonnes).
“The CCS infrastructure has been incorporated into the offshore design to capture and sequester reservoir CO2 emissions that would otherwise be vented,” a Woodside spokesperson mentioned.
The Browse gasoline mission aligned with “key policy statements of both the WA and Australian governments which recognise the pivotal role of natural gas in Australia to 2050 and beyond”, they mentioned.
Louise Morris from the Australian Marine Conservation Society mentioned the organisation was in search of a “fast no” to the mission from the division and accountable minister.
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“This proposal for carbon dumping is high cost and high risk,” she mentioned.
“Carbon pollution dumping in the ocean is a proven failure. Globally from other projects operating in the ocean – they have all failed to capture their projected emissions, have run radically over budget and we have seen leaks of CO2.”
A federal atmosphere division spokesperson mentioned that the CCS proposal was present process a “standard statutory 10-day public comment period” and that additional alternative to remark can be accessible throughout evaluation if the federal government deemed the mission a managed motion.
“Our Safeguard reforms were supported across the Parliament by the Greens and crossbench, including rules which set the reservoir carbon dioxide limit for new gas fields at zero from commencement,” a spokesperson for the local weather change and power minister, Chris Bowen, mentioned.
Geoff Bice, WA marketing campaign lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, known as Woodside’s CCS proposal “an expensive distraction” that was “environmentally reckless and doomed to fail”.
Bice mentioned paperwork obtained by Greenpeace underneath FoI confirmed that the federal atmosphere division had beforehand highlighted to Woodside “the risks of the new technology to our oceans and protected animals, as well as the risk of the injection site failing”.
“Carbon dumping is not the answer to the climate crisis – it is a licence for the profit-hungry fossil fuel industry to keep polluting,” Bice mentioned.
