Santos Energy Solutions: targeting a lower-carbon future and underpinning our sustainability

Abstract

Santos is actively working to reduce its carbon footprint and prepare for a lower-carbon future, including promoting the role of gas in this future. Santos has set a long-term aspiration to achieve net-zero emissions from its operations by 2050, and a target to reduce emissions across existing operations in the Cooper Basin and Queensland by 5% by 2025. The Energy Solutions team was created to support the delivery of these objectives. Energy Solutions completed a global technology review to identify technologies that would reduce emissions across Santos’ operations and grow gas demand. The review resulted in focus areas of solar, storage (battery, gas and other media), waste heat recovery, wind, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and solar thermal. Santos progressed to implementation and successful demonstration of emissions reduction in 2018 with a world-first installation of an autonomous solar- and battery-powered beam pump. The initial installation in the Cooper Basin is now being expanded to 56 pump conversions to solar and battery with the support of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Following this success, Santos increased scale with installation of a 2.12-MW solar array and associated infrastructure at the Port Bonython processing facility. In parallel, fuel efficiency opportunities were targeted through key equipment upgrades, including power generation at Devil Creek with new reciprocating gas engines and rationalisation of legacy compression and power generation infrastructure across the Cooper Basin. Another key focus of the team is the progression of CCS, with appraisal of reservoir targets and pre-front-end engineering design (FEED) studies completed in 2019. The success of these projects provides a robust platform to support the further and more complex emissions reduction project opportunities across Santos’ operations.