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Petronas plans Iraq carbon capture project

6 March 2023

The Malaysian state-owned oil and gas company Petronas plans to develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Iraq, according to Mohd Shahir Liew, the deputy vice chancellor of research and innovation at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP).

UTP is a research university that is wholly owned by Petronas and conducts research operations in collaboration with the oil and gas company.

“We are already piloting a carbon capture and storage project in Malaysia and we are planning to deploy one in Iraq as well,” Liew told MEED in an interview.

The ongoing pilot in Malaysia is a CCS scheme named the Kasawari integrated offshore high contaminant project.

The first injection of carbon dioxide at the site is expected to take place by the end of 2025.

Once in operation, the project is expected to reduce carbon dioxide volumes emitted via flaring by 76 million metric tonnes with an annual average of 3.7 million metric tonnes a year.

Commenting on the planned project in Iraq, Liew said: “I think we are looking at doing this in about five years’ time. We have to make sure that the one that we are doing now is successful.”

He added: “Iraq is top of our list when it comes to places that we want to implement this technology. We think it could be quite straightforward. Iraq is going to be the next location after Singapore.”

Liew said that Petronas does not want to decarbonise by withdrawing from the assets it is still operating in Iraq.

He said the company wanted to maintain stakes in the existing Iraqi assets and use new technologies to try to reduce its carbon footprint.

Petronas has been operating in Iraq since 2010 and holds an interest in the Garraf oil field (45 per cent), the Halfaya oil field (22.5 per cent) and the Badra oil field (15 per cent). Petronas is also the operator of the Garraf oil field.

In December last year, Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said the country aims to eliminate gas flaring within four years.

Iraq continues to flare large volumes of the gas extracted alongside crude oil because it lacks the facilities to process it into fuel for local consumption or exports.

Iraq is the second-largest gas-flaring country after Russia, according to the World Bank, with around 40 per cent of its gas production flared.

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Wil Crisp

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