Indonesia CCS Could Need $500M

Deployment of carbon capture storage (CCS) in Indonesia could cost about $500 million, a senior official at Indonesia's state oil firm Pertamina said on Monday.

Pertamina and ExxonMobil signed a memorandum of understanding during the COP26 summit last week to look at ways of using CCS in Southeast Asia's largest country.

"Our provisional estimate for investment needs is around $500 million, excluding operating costs that will be incurred during CCS operations," Daniel Purba, Pertamina's senior vice president of corporate strategy, told CNBC Indonesia.

CCS facilities are likely to be implemented in two Indonesia oil and gas fields, namely the Gundih field in Cepu and the Sukowati field in Bojonegoro, in Central and East Java respectively, Purba said.

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pertamina would need to build a 4 km (2.49 miles) gas pipeline from Gundih to a reservoir where they would inject the carbon, and another 30 km gas pipline from Sukowati, Purba added.

CCS traps emissions and buries them underground but is not yet at the commercialization stage.

CCS advocates see the technology as essential to help meet net-zero emissions and key to unlocking large-scale economic hydrogen production. Critics, however, say CCS will extend the life of dirty fossil fuels.

Indonesia, the world's eighth-biggest carbon emitter, has brought forward its goal for net zero emissions to 2060 or sooner.

(Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe; Writing by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Martin Petty)

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