Petronas, TotalEnergies, and Mitsui & Co, have agreed to explore a joint development of what is envisioned to be the first integrated carbon capture and storage (CCS) effort in Malaysia for industries in the Asia Pacific region.
The development agreement signed 27 June at the Energy Asia Conference in Kuala Lumpur targets all aspects of CCS development including evaluating storage in maturing and depleted fields, and in saline aquifers, and identifying potential customers and establishing the necessary commercial and legal frameworks.
Muhammad Taufik, Petronas’ president and group CEO, signed the agreement—which builds on a memorandum of understanding inked in 2022—together with Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies; and Toru Matsui, representative director and senior executive managing officer of Mitsui & Co.
“The strategic partnership demonstrates Petronas’ commitment to position Malaysia as a regional CCS hub to capture opportunities in the energy transition with a focus on reducing the carbon footprint of our operations to continue delivering the energy needs of today,” Taufik said in a news release.
Pouyanné added that “TotalEnergies is pleased to join forces with Petronas and Mitsui on a carbon storage hub in Malaysia to support decarbonization in Asia. We will bring to the partnership our strong CCS expertise, anchored in Europe with a first integrated project in Norway due to start next year and several other projects that will contribute to meeting our carbon storage capacity target of 10 million tons per year by 2030.”
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TotalEnergies partners with Equinor and Shell in Norway’s Northern Lights project, whose transport infrastructure will deliver CO2 from industrial capture sites in northern European industrial clusters to a terminal in Øygarden, Norway, for intermediate storage before being transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a reservoir 2600 m under the seabed on the Norwegian continental shelf.
Northern Lights is nearing completion and expects to inject its first CO2 for storage in 2024, according to Equinor’s website.
“CCS is based on existing technologies and seen as an affordable solution to decarbonize the hard-to-abate emitters,” Mitsui’s Matsui said in commenting on the Malaysian project.
“Mitsui will utilize its expertise in oil and gas upstream activities and extensive business networks to jointly work with Petronas and TotalEnergies to develop a CCS value chain project in Malaysia,” he added. “Through the development of CCS business globally, Mitsui will contribute to creating an eco-friendly society.”
On 26 July, TotalEnergies announced it had also inked a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Petronas’ clean energy solutions company, Gentari Renewables, to develop renewable energy projects in the Asia Pacific region.
The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the same Energy Asia Conference in Kuala Lumpur by TotalEnergies’ Julien Pouget, senior vice president Asia Pacific for exploration and production and renewables, and Sushil Purohit, CEO of Gentari, in the presence of TotalEnergies’ Pouyanné and Petronas’ Taufik, who is also chairman of Gentari in addition to presiding over Petronas as president and group CEO.
Under this agreement, TotalEnergies and Gentari will jointly develop the 100 MW Pleasant Hills Solar Project in Queensland, Australia, to supply low-carbon electricity to the Roma field’s gas production and processing facilities. TotalEnergies and Gentari’s parent company, Petronas, each hold a 27.5% stake in Gladstone LNG.
“The 100 MW Pleasant Hills Solar Project, which will contribute to lowering the emissions of Gladstone LNG, is a first material implementation of this agreement,” Pouget said in a news release about the agreement.
