CAPTURED: Five Million Tonnes

A WA LNG facility is fast approaching a major milestone: Capturing and injecting its five millionth tonne of greenhouse gas (CO2e).

Once achieved, carbon capture and storage in Australia will have hit a new peak.

What does that mean for us and for the environment?

“Injecting five million tonnes of CO2e is equivalent to taking more than 1.6 million passenger vehicles off Australia’s roads for a year” – Chevron tells us.

It’s the same as taking nearly 10 per cent of the vehicles currently on the road in Australia and deleting a full calendar years’ worth of their tailpipe emissions, for good.

Huge numbers like five million can be difficult to visualise. Here’s some reference to help imagine five million tonnes of captured greenhouse gasses.

• 1.25 million Asian elephants
• Five million Ford Falcon AU sedans
• Over 80 million Wimbledon winning Ash Bartys
• 10,256 Boeing 747s
• 23,809,523,809 Cheeseburgers

Yes. Almost 24 billion cheeseburgers worth of carbon dioxide equivalent has been prevented from escaping into the atmosphere.

The milestone will be reached at Chevron’s Gorgon LNG facility, with the five million tonnes of greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide equivalent, CO2e) injected since safely starting the system in August 2019.

There’s more. Once the system is fully operational it will capture up to four million tonnes of CO2 annually and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100 million tonnes over the life of the injection project.

That is a lot of cheeseburgers.

Carbon capture and storage is a technology that traps carbon emissions, negating their effect on the environment while providing the raw ingredients for the electricity and energy  we rely on.

The Gorgon system works by taking naturally occurring CO2 from offshore gas reservoirs and injecting it into a deep reservoir two kilometres under Barrow Island, where it remains trapped.

It prevents millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases being vented into the atmosphere.

Chevron Australia Managing Director Mark Hatfield said the project made Australia a global leader.

“The Gorgon carbon capture and storage system (CCS) is the biggest CCS system designed to capture carbon emissions and is demonstrating Australia’s world-leading capability in the area.”