South Korea eyes ageing offshore gas field for CO2 emissions storage

When Donghae gas field closes next year, its pipeline to the port of Ulsan could go into reverse, creating the country’s first major carbon-capture reservoir

Sceptics say high costs and challenges associated with carbon capture and storage may continue to keep the system from becoming commercially viable, however

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South Korea is the ninth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter on Earth. The country produces about 1.7 per cent of CO2 emissions but has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:55pm, 11 May 2021Updated: 1:49pm, 19 May 2021

Thirty-six miles off the coast of South Korea, the Donghae gas field is running dry. When it closes next year, its pipeline to the port of Ulsan could go into reverse, creating the Asian nation’s first major carbon-capture reservoir by injecting carbon dioxide into the rock below the seabed.

The plan is to store 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually for 30 years from 2025, according to Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), which will run a feasibility study on the project this year. It would be South Korea’s first major carbon capture and storage (CCS) project and could become one of the biggest in the world.

But it is an expensive gamble. The idea of storing CO2 in depleted gas fields has long been a goal of oil companies and other industries looking for a way to offset their emissions as governments clamp down on polluters. But the costs have usually made it impractical. With South Korea committing to be carbon neutral by 2050, KNOC will use the empty reservoir to try to demonstrate that the system can work.

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“Collecting and sequestrating CO2 will become an increasingly essential technology for us to reach carbon neutrality by 2050,” said Lee Hoseob, team leader at KNOC’s CCS department. “The viability of the project in the East Sea will prove that it can significantly lower the country’s carbon footprint.”

The worldwide installed capacity of CCS is only around 40 million tonnes per year as of 2020, according to the Global CCS Institute, which promotes deployment of the technology. The International Energy Agency said CCS will need to play a “major role” in a transition to net-zero emissions.

Developed nations including the US and oil majors such as ExxonMobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are proposing large-scale CCS projects as a way to offset emissions. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry said there’s “enormous interest” in the technology, while Japan included it in the nation’s 2050 net-zero plan.

In November, the UK government announced a plan to invest £1 billion (US$1.4 billion) to build four CCS hub-and-cluster projects to remove 10 million tonnes of CO2 by the end of the decade. In the US, Valero Energy Corp and BlackRock Inc plan to develop an industrial scale carbon-capture pipeline system and a storage chamber with an initial capacity of 5 million tonnes of CO2 a year.