Australia's Energy Commodity Resources 2026 Carbon capture and storage

Several policy and regulatory drivers for CCS have been implemented by the Australian Government. These include: the Future Gas Strategy (DISR 2024); the Net Zero Plan, which sets out Australia’s 2035 emissions target to 62–70% below 2005 levels by 2035 (DCCEEW, 2025a); and the Safeguard Mechanism (DCCEEW, 2023), which requires major emitters to reduce their emissions over time.

Australia has excellent potential for the application of CCS, with many onshore and offshore basins hosting suitable formations for the injection and storage of CO₂. There are hydrocarbon fields in many basins that are at mature stages of development, providing early opportunities for CCS.

There are two operating commercial-scale full-chain capture and storage projects in Australia—Gorgon CCS in Western Australia, and Moomba CCS in South Australia—and two operational research and demonstration facilities, Otway International Test Centre in Victoria and the CSIRO In-Situ Laboratory in Western Australia. Beside this, there is a growing number of commercial-scale projects that are at various stages of planning and development, both onshore and offshore (Figure 8.1; Table 8.1).

As of December 2025, there are 17 active offshore Commonwealth Greenhouse Gas Assessment Permits located in the Bonaparte, Browse, Northern Carnarvon, Perth, Otway, Bass and Gippsland basins (Figure 8.1). The total work program commitment for these areas (primary and secondary phase) amounts to nearly A$1 billion (NOPTA, 2025a).Two projects achieved a Declaration of Identified Greenhouse Gas Storage Formation (DoSF) in 2024—Calliance, located in Greenhouse Gas Assessment Permit G-8-AP, and Cliff Head, located in Petroleum Production Licence WA-31-L (NOPTA, 2025b).

Enabling regulatory framework

Offshore CCS projects in Commonwealth waters are conducted under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (OPGGS) Act 2006, the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act 1981 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the regulatory frameworks and approvals governing offshore CCS projects are described in Australian Government 2026 guidance document and NOPTA guidelines). For further information, refer to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources and Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

An Australian Government review of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006 and the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2023, led by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR), was underway in 2025. This review aims to examine and recommend improvements to the offshore environmental management regime. Additionally, the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water released the Interim National Action List in 2024 (and the final National Action List for public consultation in 2025), together with the Sea Dumping Permit Application Form (DCCEEW, 2025b).

Onshore projects are governed under equivalent state or territory legislation. South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland have had enabling legislative frameworks in place for a number of years, noting that on June 12 2024, the Queensland Government banned all greenhouse gas storage and injection activities in Queensland's Great Artesian Basin (GAB). In May 2024, the Western Australian Parliament passed the Petroleum Legislation Amendment Bill 2023 that enables the transport and storage of greenhouse gases as well as exploration for naturally-occurring hydrogen. In May 2026, Western Australia passed the Petroleum, Geothermal Energy and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Greenhouse Gas Injection and Storage) Regulations 2026 to enable CCS in the state.

CCS Projects

There are currently 19 geological storage projects across Australia, two of which are operational. The projects are mainly located in the Commonwealth jurisdiction offshore Northern Territory, Western Australia and Victoria, and onshore in South Australia (Table 8.1, Figure 8.1). Both saline aquifers and depleted fields are suitable targets for storage.

The majority of Australia’s announced CO₂ storage projects are associated with the production of natural gas/LNG. Natural gas can contain significant concentrations of CO₂ (>10%). Conventionally, CO₂ separated from natural gas has been vented into the atmosphere. However, this approach is facing increasing scrutiny due to its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and as emission reduction requirements under legislation such as the Safeguard Mechanism come into effect (DCCEEW, 2023). Australian CO₂ storage projects in development also include industrial emission sources and those linked with hydrogen and ammonia production. For further details about Australian CCS Projects including detailed descriptions, please download Geoscience Australia’s CCS Projects dataset or view it in the Australian CCS Data Hub (spatial data portal).

The Gorgon CCS project on Barrow Island, Western Australia, has been operating since 2019. The CO₂ associated with natural gas from the Gorgon and Jansz-Io fields is captured and stored in the Upper Jurassic Dupuy Formation in the Barrow Sub-basin, around 2,000 m beneath Barrow Island. The project has stored in excess of 11 Mt of CO₂ between the commencement of injection in August 2019 and July 2025, and is expected to store more than 100 Mt of CO₂ during its 40-year plus lifetime (Chevron, 2025b).

Santos’ Moomba CCS facility began injecting CO₂ in September 2024 and has stored 1.57 Mt of CO₂-equivalent to December 2025 (Santos, 2026). The project involves CO₂ separation and capture from the Moomba gas processing plant, dehydration, compression, transport and injection via four wells into the Marabooka and Strzelecki depleted fields in the Cooper Basin for permanent storage. The project plans to store CO₂ at a rate of 1.7 Mtpa at a cost of less than US$30 per tonne.

In 2025 the Bonaparte CCS project (INPEX) was awarded Major Project Status by the Australian Government and announced commencement of preliminary front-end engineering design (pre-FEED) work. This followed successful appraisal work in Greenhouse Gas Assessment Permit G-7-AP, including a 3D seismic survey and two exploration wells, that confirmed the presence of high-quality reservoir and sealing formations suitable for the safe and permanent geological storage of carbon (INPEX, 2025).

There remains an increasing focus on the development of CCS hubs based on or in addition to CO₂ storage projects associated with LNG production that will enable geological storage of emissions from hydrogen and ammonia production as well as from industrial and hard-to-abate facilities. Examples of these are the Northern Territory Low Emissions Hub, at the Middle Arm industrial precinct and Pilot Energy’s Mid West Clean Energy Project DeepC Store are developing Australia’s first multi-user floating CO₂ injection and storage hub, which will be located offshore in northern and western Australia and store between 1.5–7.5 Mt CO₂ per year (DeepC Store, 2024).

The passage of the 2023 amendment to the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act (1981) to enable transboundary movement of CO₂ for the purpose of sub-seabed storage is also generating interest from both potentially CO₂-exporting countries and developers of Australian geological storage facilities.

Direct removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere is of growing interest to abate historical CO₂ emissions and those emissions that cannot be captured or easily abated (e.g., from agricultural use or dispersed transport emissions). AspiraDAC is an example of a demonstration direct air capture and storage project that will use renewable energy to power modular direct air capture units to capture one tonne of CO₂ per day for at least one year (AspiraDAC, 2026). Cliff Head CCS is also planning to install DAC units in mid-2026 for a demonstration scale plant (Pilot Energy, 2026).

In addition to CO₂ storage, a number of projects are seeking to capture CO₂ from manufacturing or industrial processes, either for permanent storage or for use in creating new products such as low carbon cement and synthetic fuels.

Australia’s geological storage resources

Australia has an enormous theoretical capacity for geological storage of CO₂ in saline aquifers and depleted fields. The Oil and Gas Climate initiative (2025) applied the technically-based CO₂ Storage Management System (the SRMS; SPE, 2025) to produce a catalogue of global CO₂ storage resources and their maturity (Figure 8.4) which estimates that Australia has approximately 31 Gt of sub-commercial storage resources. Much of this storage resource is found in the sedimentary basins offshore Victoria (Gippsland Basin), Western Australia (Browse, Perth, Northern Carnarvon basins) and Northern Territory (Bonaparte Basin), and onshore in South Australia (Cooper, Eromanga basins) and Queensland (Surat Basin). Geoscience Australia, together with other commonwealth, state and territory agencies, is undertaking a detailed assessment of Australia’s geological CO₂ storage resource potential under the Australian Government’s Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative which will be delivered as the National Carbon Dioxide Storage Resource Atlas.