Malaysia's Petronas plans to scale up CCS at Kasawari gas field

Malaysia's Petronas plans to scale up a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project as part of the second phase of development at the Kasawari gas field off Sarawak, its CEO said.

The CCS project at the field, which is estimated to hold 3 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, is key to the state energy firm's plans to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"This will potentially be one of the world's largest CCS projects," CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik Tengku Aziz said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday at the Reuters Impact conference.

It will be able to capture more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, he said.

"It's a tricky project because it needs to deal with our own system requirements," he said.

"It is something that we think can be scaled up in phase two," he said, but declined to elaborate on the potential cost involved as the project will have to be tendered out.

While profitable and scalable CCS projects remain scarce, Taufik said he was confident that the planned stream of global investments in CCS will make it a viable means for energy firms to curb emissions.

"There are many, many projects in place in Scandinavia, our counterparts in Norway, and we've also got a template out in Australia where CCS has been deployed," he said.

"The question is whether the scale is large enough to make it economic."

The Kasawari project will also ensure that Petronas remains one of the world's top five exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Taufik said.

Global gas demand accelerated this year with Asia spot prices <LNG-AS> hitting all-time highs as economies recover from the pandemic.

"The reality is, in any projections, even IEA's most aggressive projections of renewables displacement, we will still need hydrocarbons to be part of the energy mix," Taufik said, adding that natural gas will account for about a quarter of the world's energy demand.

"Many of us, my counterparts and I, believe that CCS will be part of the solution to decarbonise the extraction of hydrocarbons," he said.

Petronas is also looking at offering CCS as a solution for power and the cement, steel and chemicals sectors which are facing challenges in reducing billions of tonnes of emissions, Taufik said, adding that carbon taxes and carbon pricing will be key in making these projects economical.

He declined to comment on the carbon price that Petronas applies to its projects.

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