Japanese firms, Petronas select Malaysian CCS site

A group of Japanese companies and Malaysian state-owned Petronas have signed a storage site agreement for their carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Malaysia.

Japanese upstream company Japex, engineering firm JGC and shipping company Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (Kline) and their partners in Malaysia — Petronas' subsidiary Petronas CCS Ventures and Sarawak-owned energy firm Petroleum Sarawak — selected their carbon storage site to be a depleted gas field in block M3 offshore Sarawak.

The 26 February agreement followed an initial deal signed in September 2023 by the Japanese companies and Petronas to study CCS opportunities in Malaysia. The partners plan to proceed to examine shipping carbon dioxide from Japan and other countries, develop an inland recipient terminal and pipelines and explore the feasibility of the project.

Japex, JGC and Kline have also partnered with Japanese steel mill JFE Steel, power utility Chugoku Electric Power and LPG shipping company Nippon Gas Line to separately study a CCS value chain from Japan to Malaysia.

By Nanami Oki