MELBOURNE: On Thursday, Santos Ltd. asked South Korea to invest in Australian gas and carbon capture and storage to help South Korea meet its needs until 2050.
About one-third of South Korea’s LNG imports come from Australia. At an energy security conference in Seoul, Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said that the country’s imports will peak in 2039 at just over 48 million tonnes a year. After that, they will go down to about 42 million tonnes a year by 2050.
According to a copy of his speech released by his company, “This is a great chance for trade and investment in Australian LNG, which will give Korea energy security and cleaner energy for the next 30 years,” He said this at a conference hosted by the government of South Korea.
Santos wants to sell low-carbon LNG from its Barossa gas project by removing carbon dioxide from the gas and putting it in the depleted Bayu-Undan gas field off East Timor.
Gallagher and East Timor have both said that the planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) project is likely to cost more than $1 billion.
Gallagher said that CCS would be necessary to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 as long as fossil fuels are still needed.
“Carbon capture and storage will allow us to reduce emissions from the production of natural gas and LNG, but more importantly, it will give us the chance to help our customers reduce or offset emissions from their use,” he said.
SK E & S, a private South Korean company, is one of Santos’ partners in Barossa.
Gallagher’s comments came about a week after a South Korean court threw out a case in which two Indigenous Australian groups tried to stop South Korea’s export credit agencies from giving loans for a pipeline for the $3.6 billion Barossa project that Santos is building off the coast of northern Australia.
At the South Korean energy security conference, there were also officials from the Australian, French, and U.S. embassies, as well as executives from Nigeria LNG and Pertamina, the state oil company of Indonesia.
