TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Sumitomo on Tuesday said it and Sharjah National Oil Corp (SNOC) will study a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at a mature gas field in the United Arab Emirates.
Energy-poor Japan is actively diversifying its economy away from fossil fuels and is promoting its green technology in the Gulf countries, as the region aims to turn from the world’s biggest oil producer into the global clean energy hub.
The project would capture CO2 from nearby power and industrial plants and other emitters in Sharjah and neighbouring emirates and store it in SNOC’s on-shore gas field with capacity of over several hundred million tons of CO2, Sumitomo said in a statement.
Sumitomo and SNOC would conduct a joint feasibility study of the potential project which could use Japanese technologies in carbon capture, transport and storage, the statement added.
The company, however, did not provide financial details or timing of the possible project.
“We believe there is big potential for CCS in the Middle East, as it is a key technology to materialize energy transition,” Hajime Mori, managing director of Sumitomo Corp Middle East FZE, said in the statement.
During his trip to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar last week, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida promoted technologies for energy transition, including for hydrogen and ammonia – cleaner fuels which Tokyo wants to import back.
(Reporting by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Varun H K)
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