The CarbonNet Project, a trailblazing CCS initiative, is progressing through what has been a transformative 14-year journey. Situated in southeast Victoria, this project has evolved from an interesting concept into a multifaceted project that promises to contribute to decarbonisation via its transport and storage project.
Established in 2009 and funded by both Commonwealth and State governments, CarbonNet has been at the forefront of the CCS journey in Australia. Its primary objective is to establish a CCS hub in the Latrobe Valley, where diverse industries contribute CO2 emissions for transport through an underground pipeline to the project’s initial offshore storage site, known as Pelican, in the globally renowned Gippsland Basin.
The CarbonNet journey has been marked by significant milestones, including legislative changes to accommodate its future storage goals. Knowledge sharing and regulatory engagement has also been an ongoing priority, facilitating a robust feedback loop to ensure alignment with contemporary environmental standards. Adapting to dynamic market conditions, the project is working to secure customers within the ever-changing CO2 market while seeking to create a commercially viable model.
More recently CarbonNet has intersected with proposed offshore wind infrastructure and onshore transmission projects. Additionally, the explosive growth of new energy solutions within the Gippsland region has created challenges and opportunities for the project.
CarbonNet’s Project Director, Jane Burton will provide an insightful overview of CarbonNet's remarkable evolution, highlighting the critical role it plays in the journey towards establishing a sustainable and carbon-neutral future and the road to Final Investment Decision, scheduled for mid-2024.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is critical in Australia to future production of lower-carbon natural gas for domestic use and international export. There may also be targeted applications in other sectors, such as electricity, industrial heat generation, and manufacturing. Still, only a small portion of the country’s CO₂ emissions are likely to be addressed with carbon capture. That leaves significant CO₂ storage potential untapped. Wood Mackenzie’s analysis suggests that Australia’s CCS opportunity lies less in the reduction of domestic emissions, and more in enabling other countries’ net zero ambitions.
This involves building hubs to transport and store CO₂ at scale, using Australia’s vast geological resources. Such hubs are major capital projects and typically require billions of dollars of investment. However, supporting CO₂ storage hubs with public funding may feel like a bitter policy pill to swallow, if there is not a large Australian emissions reduction number on the other side of it. So, why should Australia put its money towards this, and fast? In this paper, we will size the economic opportunity, benchmark Australia’s competitiveness with other aspiring hubs in the region, and assess the amount of investment and policies required to get there.

The Northern Carnarvon CCS Hub project is a proposed large-scale multi-user carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub development located near Karratha, WA. It is being progressed by Northern Carnarvon CCS Joint Venture* (JV). The proposed hub is ideally located to aggregate emissions from existing sources. It would also have the potential to facilitate the development of new lower-carbon industries, such as the production of hydrogen and ammonia, by providing a local solution for emissions. The JV has been awarded the greenhouse gas assessment permit G-10-AP, located in the Northern Carnarvon Basin off the north-western coast of Western Australia and is now assessing the technical, regulatory and commercial feasibility of aggregating emissions from existing and potential future facilities and geological storage of carbon dioxide in the permit area. Initial notional capacity of the proposed hub may be up to 5 mtpa, with opportunity for future expansion, which could potentially make it one of the largest offshore CCS hubs globally.  
The proposed technical paper (Extended Abstract) will:  
- provide an overview of the Northern Carnarvon CCS Hub; 
- outline key enabling factors for CCS Hub developments; and 
- explain the process the JV went through to select development concept.  
* JV includes Woodside Energy Ltd (Operator), bp Developments Australia Pty Ltd, Japan Australia LNG (MIMI) Pty Ltd, which is owned equally by Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsui & Co., Ltd, Shell Australia Pty Ltd and Chevron Australia Pty Ltd. 

Bream gas field in the Gippsland Basin, Victoria, has world class geology and presents as an excellent candidate for CCS given its favorable reservoir properties, proximity to existing infrastructure, and a readily available CO2 source.
Demonstration of safe, secure, and cost-effective CO2 sequestration by repurposing existing facilities in Bream, would open larger opportunities in other depleted fields in the Basin, with the potential to turn the Basin into a major CCS hub supporting Australia’s decarbonisation.
Bream reservoir properties are very well understood due to extensive geological and geophysical information available from wells and seismic data. Additionally, the field has been through three key production and injection cycles during the history, oil production and gas re-injection in 1988, gas cap blowdown started in 2002, and seasonal gas storage and withdrawal started in 2012. This provides a wealth of dynamic data to be used for tuning the reservoir models to improve our confidence on the CO2 plume prediction. However, there are also challenges in modelling CO2 storage in depleted fields. Unlike saline aquifers, CO2 will be injected into a three-phase depleted reservoir that contains residual oil and gas saturation.
Modelling activities followed by risk analysis, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty assessment were performed to improve our understanding of CO2 behavior and plume shape for CO2 injection into Bream reservoirs. The key aspects of our workflow to evaluate the plume behavior are presented in this paper. The results of the work show Bream is a safe and reliable candidate for CCS.