COMMERCIAL AND TECHNICAL ISSUES FOR LARGE-SCALE CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE PROJECTS—A GIPPSLAND BASIN STUDY

Abstract

The Latrobe Valley in Victoria’s Gippsland Basin is the location of one of Australia’s most important energy resources—extremely thick, shallow brown coal seams constituting total useable reserves of more than 50,000 million tonnes. Brown coal has a higher moisture content than black coal and generates more CO2 emissions per unit of useful energy when combusted. Consequently, while the Latrobe Valley’s power stations provide Australia’s lowest- cost bulk electricity, they are also responsible for over 60 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year—over half of the Victorian total. In an increasingly carbon constrained world the ongoing development of the Latrobe Valley brown coal resource is likely to require a drastic reduction in the CO2 emissions from new coal use projects—and carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to meet such deep cuts. The offshore Gippsland Basin, the site of major producing oil and gas fields, has the essential geological characteristics to provide a high-volume, low-cost site for CCS. The importance of this potential to assist the continuing use of the nation’s lowest-cost energy source prompted the Australian Government to fund the Latrobe Valley CO2 Storage Assessment (LVCSA).

The LVCSA proposal was initiated by Monash Energy (formerly APEL, and now a 100% subsidiary of Anglo American)—the proponent of a major brown coal-to-liquids plant in the Latrobe Valley. Monash Energy’s plans for the 60,000 BBL per day plant include CCS to store about 13 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The LVCSA, undertaken for Monash Energy by the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), provides a medium to high-level technical and economic characterisation of the volume and cost potential for secure geosequestration of CO2 produced by the use of Latrobe Valley brown coal (Hooper et al, 2005a). The assessment’s scope includes consideration of the interaction between CO2 injection and oil and gas production, and its findings have been publicly released for use by CCS proponents, oil and gas producers and all other interested parties as an executive summary, (Hooper et al, 2005b), a fact sheet (Hooper et al, 2005c) and a presentation (Hooper et al, 2005d)).

The LVCSA identifies the key issues and challenges for implementing CCS in the Latrobe Valley and provides a reference framework for the engagement of stakeholders. In effect the LVCSA constitutes a pre-feasibility study for the implementation of geosequestration in support of the continuing development of Victoria’s brown coal resources.

The LVCSA findings indicate that the Gippsland Basin has sufficient capacity to safely and securely store large volumes of CO2 and may provide a viable means of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and other projects using brown coal in the Latrobe Valley. The assessment also indicates that CO2 injection could well be designed to avoid any adverse impact on adjacent oil and gas production, so that CO2 injection can begin near fields that have not yet come to the end of their productive lives. However, CCS proposals involving adjacent injection and production will require more detailed risk management strategies and continuing cooperation between prospective injectors and existing producers.