Santos books CO2 storage in Cooper basin
Australian energy company Santos on February 8 announced a booking of 100mn metric tons of CO2 storage resource in the Cooper basin in South Australia.
This represents a subset of the total prospective storage resource in the Cooper Basin and follows the final investment decision on the 1.7mn mt/year Moomba carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in November last year, the company said.
Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said the announcement is a significant step in the company’s decarbonisation pathway and carbon storage hub strategy.
"Santos sees CO2 storage capacity as a strategic competitive advantage in evolving cleaner energy, clean fuels and carbon markets,” he said. “This globally significant carbon storage capacity booking is another tangible example of Santos leading the way in establishing the foundations to support the energy transition."
The announcement forms part of the release of Santos' annual reserves statement. Proved plus probable (2P) reserves increased by 80% to 1,676mn barrels of oil equivalent at the end of 2021, primarily due to the final investment decision on the Barossa project and the Oil Search merger.
The merger with Oil Search added 416mn boe of 2P reserves while the final investment decision on Barossa added a further 373mn boe, the company said. Santos has booked Barossa reserves at a 50% interest following the execution of a binding sale and purchase agreement to sell a 12.5% stake in Barossa to Japan's Jera, completion of which is expected in the first half of 2022.
2C contingent resources increased by 41% to 3,219mn boe, primarily due to the Oil Search merger, partially offset by the commercialisation of Barossa 2C resources to reserves at FID.