Shocking! Chevron Not Even Close To "Carbon Capture" Targets For W. Australia Gas Project

[hatrack]

The energy giant Chevron has conceded its self-described world’s biggest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project has failed to meet a five-year target for burying carbon dioxide under an island off Western Australia. Climate campaigners believe the company should be heavily fined after it acknowledged on Monday that it had not met a requirement to capture and inject underground at least 80% of emissions from a gas reservoir over the first five years of the Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) development

The Western Australian environment minister, Amber-Jade Sanderson, said through a spokesperson that she had called Chevron in for a meeting “to seek an explanation of how the company intends to address the issue”. An analysis last year suggested Chevron could face a bill of more than A$100m if required to offset all emissions that breached its approval requirements. Chevron Australia, which operates the Gorgon facility on behalf of partners including Shell and ExxonMobil, issued a statement saying it was “poised to reach a significant milestone” of injecting 5m tonnes of greenhouse gas more than 2km beneath Barrow Island since sequestration belatedly began in August 2019.

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Ian Porter, a former oil and gas industry executive who is chair of the advocacy group Sustainable Energy Now WA, said the report was likely to find the project had captured only 30% of what it was supposed to. He said the report would be a “major test case for CCS technology”, which the Morrison government is backing as one of five priorities under what it calls a “technology, not taxes” approach to emissions reduction. “It’s a shocking failure of one of the world’s largest engineering projects,” Porter said. “Chevron needs to face significant fines and be forced to offset the more than six million tonnes of unauthorised legacy carbon dioxide releases. “I sincerely hope CCS does work one day. Ultimately, we need it. But until that time, it is reckless and disingenuous for the industry to keep pretending that it can expand operations and reach net zero.”

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Official data shows the Gorgon facility has twice breached its initial emissions limit under the safeguard mechanism, a federal government policy that was promised to cap industrial carbon pollution but has allowed continued increases. When the scheme started in 2016-17, Gorgon’s annual emissions limit – known as a baseline – was 8.34m tonnes of CO2. It released 9.02m tonnes in 2017-18 and 8.97m tonnes in 2018-19, the most recent year for which data is available. Rather than be penalised for the breaches, it was allowed to set a new baseline calculated across a three-year period.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/20/a-shocking-failure-chevron-criticised-for-missing-carbon-capture-target-at-wa-gas-project

[Honest auditor]

1. Trusting O&G emissions reporting

Bear in mind that their reported emissions are not audited so the poor results referred to here could be much worse if the figures were audited. But we trust O&G companies to accurately report a figure that damages their financial position and reputation right?

[gopiscrap]

2. welcome to DU