Japan’s Nippon Steel has signed a joint study agreement with Australian carbon capture and storage (CCS) developer deepC Store to explore its floating carbon capture and storage hub potential.
Last summer, the Japanese oil and gas major Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation joined forces with independent Australian energy company Transborders Energy for the establishment of the offshore deepC Store project, marking the corporation’s first investment in CCS.
And now the country’s leading steel producer is looking to use the floating CCS hub’s potential to decarbonize its own operations.
At present, Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) is considering transporting between 1 million and 5 million metric tons of liquefied CO2 per year to the deepC Store hub project called CStore1 from its operations in Japan.
Both sides will work closely to evaluate the technical conditions of the carbon emissions to be captured and transported, as well as the commercial terms of the process.
The joint study deepC Store chairman Jack Sato described the joint study as a demonstration of the ‘ongoing commitment to establish CStore1 as the first offshore floating CCS hub project in the Asian Pacific region.’
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NSC managing executive officer Hideo Suzuki, on his part, shared his opinion that CCS is one of the crucial tools for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
And with the help of the joint study based on the unique floating CCS hub technology, Nippon Steel hopes to gain more expertise and knowledge in the realm of carbon capture.
The proposed CStore1 project will aim to capture somewhere from 1.5 million to 7.5 millions tons of carbon per year from various industrial sources in the Asia-Pacific region.
Once captured, the CO2 will be liquefied and shipped to a floating storage injection (FSI) hub site off the Australian coast, where it will be injected below the surface into a storage complex nearby.
Read more: Japanese Energy Giants Invest in Australian CCS Project
