In the bizarro world of Kevin Gallagher, CEO of Australia’s worst climate culprit Santos, the path to a net-zero carbon world lies through increasing fossil fuel use — specifically oil and gas, which his company produces — by pouring money into opening new extraction sites for fossil fuels. And it means “decarbonisation, not defossilisation”.
Note that phrase from Gallagher. He sees a bright future for fossil fuels in a net-zero world. He wants “the decarbonisation projects that will enable an orderly transition, rather than the chaos we are seeing today”.
That’s corporate double-speak for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which Santos and other climate culprits like Woodside are relying on to enable them to continue to make billions from gas exports (while paying minimal tax).
Santos is a big spruiker of CCS, inevitably subsidised by the previous government, which devoted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to it. Gallagher claims CCS is “proven technology for low-cost, large-scale emissions reduction”.
Labor, which like the Coalition has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Santos in recent years, is also supporting CCS, as is the Biden administration in the US, which is offering billions in CCS subsidies to fossil fuel companies.
The extent to which CCS has been discredited has been repeatedly pointed out by Crikey over the years — including the immortal, honest observation of a major US coal executive: “It is neither practical nor economic. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.”
Insert oil and gas in that sentence instead and you get an accurate description of what Santos is doing.
It would be worthwhile to check in on the current status of CCS in Australia. The spectacular failure of the flagship CCS project in Australia, Chevron’s Gorgon CCS project in Western Australia, is a matter of public record. Last month, the WA Environmental Protection Authority responded to an application by Chevron to soften the conditions of its permits to operate its Barrow Island facility by proposing to tighten them and make them clearer, especially in relation to Chevron’s commitment to capture and store 80% of CO2 produced from the Gorgon gas field. It also rejected Chevron’s attempts to change the carbon accounting rules and demanded that the company proceed consistently to full abatement by 2050.
Chevron admitted in its most recent environmental report that it was far short of its 80% commitment. The EPA’s report noted that injection levels fell markedly in 2021. And remember that Gorgon involves literally the simplest, lowest-cost, easiest form of CCS there is — taking CO2 that’s already been captured as part of the process of extracting gas from the gas field, and pumping it back underground.
The truth is the world desperately needs defossilisation, not the climate version of Potemkin villages purporting to represent decarbonisation but continuing to enable massive CO2 emissions. But taxpayers continue to fund CCS under Labor, just as it was funded under the Coalition.
You can only hope that Gallagher and his ilk are aware of their own guile, that they are deliberate and manipulative, and are out for their own ends. Because if they genuinely believe this sort of delusional rubbish, and they’re in charge of some of this country’s biggest companies, then God help the economy and all of us with it.
CCS is such an obvious scam
– the atomic mass of one carbon atom: 12.011
– the atomic mass of one oxygen atom: 15.999
then, when most carbon atoms are burned, you end up with CO2
so if you do the math based on the numbers above (and ignore any weird quantum effects etc) you end up with something like – 44.009
that’s over three times the mass of the original carbon atom !
how can you squeeze something over three times the mass into its original hole? – particularly when carbon prefers to exist as a solid and is happy to lie around, while carbon dioxide is a gas and refuses to stay put!
CCS hucksters need to be called out on this nonsense every single time they open their big, lying mouths
Nature calls CCS photosynthesis. How we replicate it is the question. Trees kind of work pretty well and so does algae. The question is how much energy in do we need and what is the carbohydrate output going to look like?
So it’s appropriate that the our current global climate trend will result in large bloomings of blue-green algae commensurate with the growth in the Teal (blue-green) vote.
Gotta love the irony.
I think that excess irony was when we paid graziers to plant trees in areas where none grew naturally.
Here‘s a question you’ll never hear:
What is the justification for giving ANY fossil fuels concern ANY taxpayer funding? Especially considering that the best of them give about 0.5% of far-call back?
You know the old Aussie saying – Put up, or Shut up.
They want to fund their greenwash schemes, do they? Tel them to take it out of their tax-free windfall profits.
PS: I would consider supporting a party that refuses funding from planet-killers.
You’re in luck, the Greens are the only party “that refuses funding from planet-killers.”
Their decades of dominance over our policy direction : what have we got to show for it?… A looming buffalo jump cliff … and we’re the buffalo….
If “we” hadn’t relied so heavily on the over-dependent over-exploitation of fossil fuel power for so long; if governments and their fossil fuel company benefactors hadn’t been so greedy for the income from such exploitation of those resources; if governments hadn’t been so obstructive (so as to underwrite the continuing profits of their fossil fuel donors) of the research and development of competitive renewables :- “we” wouldn’t be needing to truncate and terminate their continued exploitation now
Fossil fuels may have had a continuing future – shared with renewables.
But the damage from that selfish, sponsored sugar-hit, over-reliance has been done.
Now it’s time to settle up, for that historical lack of foresight and overabundance of greed and abuse of power.
To invest in our future existence : rather than continue to imperil it for the sake of a miniscule minority vested interest.
I wonder whether Santos CEO really believes this rubbish, or, whether he thinks that he can pull the wool over some people’s eyes and ears.
I would like the Fossil’s to reimburse of us, taxpayers and all Australian residents the money which they have been given (150%) of exploration and development costs and all the waived royalties to commence their compensation for the damage done during the time taken to prove this con job called Carbon Capture and Storage CCS to be proven to be almost useless.
I think that all the CEO’s of the Fossils’ need to start sacrificing their bonus’ and half their salaries into an relocate the atoll dwellers fund.