A super basin is an area where large hydrocarbon resources are co-located with the potential for plentiful clean electricity and large-scale carbon capture and storage. Australia’s oil and gas industry needs to urgently fast-track the creation of energy super basins to provide a pathway to greater sustainability and cut emissions.
That’s according to Anne Forbes, an Upstream Research Analyst at Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac), the company highlighted in a statement posted on its website, adding that a super basin is an area where large hydrocarbon resources are co-located with the potential for plentiful clean electricity and large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS).
At the recent Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) Conference in Adelaide, Forbes said that the development of super basins in Australia is possible in certain advantaged locations but added that it would be challenging in the prevailing economic conditions where additional costs can impact profit margins, the WoodMac statement pointed out.
According to the statement, Australia has among the highest CO2 intensity per barrel of oil equivalent of the major producing countries, coming in at an average of 42 tons of CO2 per produced per thousand barrels of oil equivalent. This is caused mainly by the dominance of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector in Australia, which utilizes an energy-intensive liquefaction process, the WoodMac statement noted.
Forbes told delegates at the APPEA event, “As upstream becomes more entwined with low and no-carbon businesses, some serious questions are going to be asked of Australian operators. Turning Australia’s vast deposits of disadvantaged gas into a better – and more resilient – investment opportunity is going to require collaboration across the whole energy spectrum, something that has historically rarely happened in the sector.”
In the statement, WoodMac noted that global upstream super basins were originally defined as holding more than 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent of recoverable resource, of which more than five billion barrels of oil equivalent remains. Globally, more than 90 percent of current oil and gas production comes from around 40 super basins.
Source: RIGZONE