Japan's JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp, a unit of ENEOS Holdings, aims to store 5 million metric tons of carbon by 2030.
"By 2030, we want 5 million tons per year of carbon storage. By 2040, it is 15 million tonnes. And 50 million tons by 2050," Tetsuo Yamada, JX Nippon's executive vice president and chief strategy officer, said on the sidelines of the Energy Asia conference on June 27.
CCS technology eliminates CO2 emissions from the atmosphere and stores them underground, and the government considers it crucial to lower emissions to meet its 2050 goal of achieving carbon neutrality. Some of the captured CO2 can also potentially be used in a range of industrial applications.
Yamada said JX Nippon was in talks with the government to store the carbon captured in Japanese waters, also separately was in discussions with Malaysia's state-run Petronas and an Australian private company.
Japan aims to increase the annual CCS capacity to as much as 12 million metric tons by 2030, and 240 million tonnes by 2050.
Most of the carbon that JX Nippon plans to capture and store will be from its parent ENEOS Holdings, Japan's top oil refiner, which aims to become carbon neutral by 2040, Yamada said.
"They have to capture 16 million tonnes to realise carbon neutrality by 2040… So all this 16 million tonnes is not all for Japan waters, some will be exported to Malaysia or Australia," he said.
