It is part of larger development plans for the Tangguh gas block in eastern Indonesia operated by BP and partners including Japan’s Mitsubishi and Inpex, as well as China’s CNOOC.
BP Indonesia President Nader Zaki and the chair of Indonesia’s upstream regulator SKK Migas Dwi Soetjipto signed a memorandum of understanding on the Vorwata CCUS project today.
Zaki said that completion is targeted for 2026 or 2027 and, by that time, 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide will be injected back into the reservoir annually, with the amount reaching a total of up to 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2035 and 33 million metric tons by 2045.
He added that through enhanced gas recovery and by sequestering the carbon dioxide, Tangguh operators will potentially gain up to 300 billion cubic feet of incremental gas in 2035 and as much as 520 billion cubic feet in 2045.
“By doing this [the CCUS project], we are attacking the energy dilemma, increasing production and also lowering emission[s],” Zaki said at the signing ceremony on the sidelines of a conference by SKK Migas on the resort island of Bali, according to a transcript of his remarks.
Tangguh is the largest gas producer in Indonesia, generating 1.4 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day, or up to 20% of the country’s daily gas production. BP and its partners are working on increasing Tangguh’s production capacity to 2.1 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day.
“When this project is online … [the] Tangguh LNG (liquified natural gas) plant will be one of the lowest emission LNG plants in the world as it removes up to … 90% [of] reservoir associated CO2,” Zaki added.
The International Energy Agency has underscored the importance of CCUS technologies in achieving net carbon zero emissions, as they allow the capture of carbon dioxide from existing energy assets, fuel combustion or industrial processes to then be used to create valuable products or permanently stored deep underground in geological formations.
Samantha McCulloch, head of CCUS at the IEA, said in a note last week that this year has seen “unprecedented advances” for such technologies.
“So far in 2021, more than 100 new CCUS facilities have been announced and the global project pipeline for CO2 capture capacity is on track to quadruple,” she said.
“The growth in the project pipeline in 2021 represents a major departure from the years 2010 to 2017, when plans for CCUS facilities were being cancelled and the pipeline of potential projects shrank.”
The IEA said that on average, capture capacity of less than 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide has been added worldwide each year since 2010, with annual capture capacity now reaching over 40 million metric tons. It added that capacity needs to be increased to 1.6 billion metric tons in 2030 in order to reach net zero by 2050.
Tutuka Ariadji, director general for oil and gas at Indonesia’s energy ministry, said in September that CCUS will be an integral part of oil and gas development in Southeast Asia’s largest economy to enable it to lower carbon emissions while still producing oil and gas.
He added that studies are ongoing for several other potential CCUS projects in Indonesia involving, among others, state oil and gas company Pertamina and the Bandung Institute of Technology; Inpex, Japan Petroleum Exploration and Japanese electricity company J-Power; and Spanish petroleum company Repsol.