The Esso Australia-BHP Gippsland joint venture has signed an agreement with Air Liquide Australia to extract and reuse carbon dioxide (CO2) from gas produced from Bass Strait fields.
Under the terms of the long-term agreement, Air Liquide will build, own, and operate a new CO2 processing and purification facility adjacent to the Esso-BHP natural gas processing plants at Longford, near Sale in Victoria.
Esso-BHP will construct facilities at its Longford gas conditioning plant to enable it to transfer CO2 directly to the proposed Air Liquide plant. Air Liquide will then purify the CO2 to food and beverage quality which will be sold to Australian businesses.
Construction of the 65,000 tonnes/year CO2 processing plant is expected to begin later this year.
Commercial terms were not disclosed.