Singapore, Indonesia to collaborate on CCS

Singapore and Indonesia have signed a letter of intent (LOI) to co-operate on cross-border carbon capture and storage (CCS), the countries announced on 15 February.

This comes after Indonesia issued a presidential regulation on CCS in January that would allow CCS operators to set aside 30pc of their storage capacity for CO2 from international sources. A working group comprising government officials from both countries will collaborate on creating a legally binding bilateral agreement that will enable the cross-border transport and storage of CO2 between Singapore and Indonesia.

Singapore is the first country to sign an agreement with Indonesia following the issuance of the CCS regulation.

Indonesia has an estimated CO2 storage potential of up to 600bn t in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or aquifers. There are around 40 commercial capture facilities in operation globally, with a total capacity of more than 45mn t/yr of CO2, according to the Paris-based IEA. Global carbon capture utilisation and storage facilities will have to increase their capacity to around 1bn t/yr by 2030, and 6bn t/yr by 2050, in order to meet net zero emissions by 2050 targets, Singapore and Indonesia said, citing the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2023.

Singapore has a net zero by 2050 goal and aims to achieve 2mn t/yr of carbon capture by 2030, and 6mn t/yr by 2050. Indonesia targets net zero by 2060, and in 2022 submitted a nationally determined contribution with an unconditional target to reduce emissions by 29-32pc below the business-as-usual scenario from 2020 levels, by 2030

"Cross-border collaboration is important to contributing to collective regional decarbonisation outcomes," the countries said.

"With this LOI, Singapore and Indonesia can become the pathfinders to catalyse deployment of cross-border CCS projects in southeast Asia," deputy secretary of Singapore's ministry of industry and trade, Keith Tan, said.

Southeast Asian national oil companies such as Indonesia's Pertamina, Malaysia's Petronas and Thailand's PTTEP remain firmly focused on growing fossil fuel production, but are increasingly recognising the potential for CCS to allow them to offset their emissions. These firms are already working on developing CCS, such as Petronas' projects at the Kasawari gas field offshore Malaysia, and there have been an increasing number of cross-border CCS agreements between companies. PTTEP is trying to carry out CCS "in-house" at its producing fields, as well as working with Petronas in locations where the firms have production-sharing contracts.

By Prethika Nair