Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

As the climate crisis worsens, the fossil fuel industry is promoting carbon pollution dumping or CCS as a way to bury carbon dioxide pollution by pumping it through wells under the ground, including below the ocean floor. 

In recent years, the Australian Government has offered up vast areas under our ocean to fossil fuel companies for carbon pollution dumping with CCS through an annual process known as ‘acreage release’. The areas proposed for CCS include huge areas off the coasts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and between Victoria and Tasmania. But despite these acreage releases, offshore carbon dumping has never occurred in Australian waters and should never be allowed to start. 

Right now, fossil fuel polluter Woodside and its joint venture partners want to drill 50 new gas wells and up to seven drill sites to dump carbon pollution in the ocean around Scott Reef off the northern coastline of Western Australia in a proposal known as Browse. Scott Reef should be a safe place for marine life to thrive, not an industrial gas zone. Woodside claims the CCS component of its Browse proposal will help offset its massive carbon emissions. But in reality, its claimed figures are highly problematic and speculative given offshore CCS is a proven failure.

Oil and gas companies use CCS to try to offset their carbon emissions. This allows the industry to claim net-zero ambitions, while continuing to extract and burn fossil fuels—worsening the climate crisis and slowing the vital shift to renewable energy. As well as proposing new offshore carbon pollution dumping projects, some fossil fuel companies will propose burying carbon pollution at depleted oil and gas fields using aging pipelines and wells to avoid cleaning up their mess in the ocean.

Carbon pollution dumping is an expensive failure, risky at every stage.  We must stop offshore carbon dumping in Australian waters from ever happening.

Carbon pollution dumping CCS projects would have alarming impacts on our marine environment and wildlife at every stage, and even long after projects are “finished”. Seismic blasting to map beneath the seafloor is the first step in offshore carbon pollution dumping. It’s loud, like an underwater bomb, deafening and disorienting whales, turtles, rays and sharks and killing krill and plankton, the food web foundation of ocean life. Seismic blasting continues for many decades after carbon pollution is dumped to monitor the area for leaks, fissures and fractures.

There are risks of leaks and pollution – from pipelines to wells, and even underneath the seafloor – at every stage of CCS development and operation.  This is because highly pressurised CO2 forms carbonic acid when exposed to water, and carbonic acid strongly corrodes carbon steel infrastructure. Impurities in the carbon pollution stream can also make it more acidic and more likely to corrode carbon steel, causing leaks. When carbon pollution leaks, it acidifies the seawater around it, which can harm and suffocate nearby marine life. 

Pressure also builds up under the seafloor from burying the carbon pollution, which can damage the seafloor and the fossil fuel equipment containing it. The changes in pressure can lift the seafloor, create new fractures under it, and induce earthquakes. This further increases the risks of carbon pollution leaking and harming surrounding marine plants and animals. Offshore CCS is a major new threat to Australia’s precious marine life. 

CCS has been a proven failure for decades, and existing offshore carbon pollution dumping projects are rife with problems. 

High-profile and hugely expensive offshore CCS projects in Norwegian waters have failed to deliver promised amounts of carbon storage. 

Chevron’s Gorgon CCS project on Barrow Island in Western Australia is an Australian example of CCS failure, where leaking valves, risks of corrosion, and unmanageable pressure buildup have forced Chevron to slow or halt operations, and instead release millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution into the air that it committed to burying below the ocean floor. 

Tens of thousands of Australian ocean lovers have already spoken out against seismic blasting and now’s the time for us to do the same against the threat of carbon pollution dumping, for the sake of the oceans and marine life we love.

Header image: An oil platform and carbon storage project in the South China Sea. Photo by Mao Siqian/Xinhua via Getty Images.