China National Offshore Oil Corp. completes first offshore carbon capture site

Chinese state-owned oil and gas firm CNOOC Ltd has completed the country's first offshore carbon capture and storage project designed to permanently bury carbon dioxide in the seabed. The project is located at the company's Enping Oilfield in the mouth of the Pearl River, about 200 km from Shenzhen, and will store CO2 emitted during the oil extraction process. CNOOC began constructing the project last September 2021 and said it would eventually sequester a total of 1.46 million tonnes of CO2 in 800-metre deep seabed reservoirs. The stored carbon dioxide was the equivalent of planting 14 million trees or taking 1 million cars off the road, the company said. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS or CCS) allows emission-intensive industries like oil and gas, cement and power to prevent climate-warming CO2 from entering the atmosphere.