JAPANESE oil and gas exploration company JX Nippon is focused on continuing its investment in Papua New Guinea, especially in the petroleum and energy space.
The firm’s chief executive officer Toshiya Nakahara said the firm entered Papua New Guinea in 1990 and was involved in oil projects in Kutubu, Moran and Gobe in Southern Highlands and currently in the PNG LNG project.
“JX still has projects which would be developed (Papua LNG, P’nyang and Muruk), so JX currently focuses on such projects,” he said.
“We advocate in a two-pronged approach focusing on the oil and natural gas development and production business as the fundamental business but another prong is the environment-friendly business centred one on carbon capture storage and carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCS/CCUS) as the growth business which we are looking at and want to invest in.”
Nakahara added that the company was involved in a range of oil and natural gas exploration projects in eight countries and JX Nippon recently started implementing a CO2-EOR (enhanced oil recovery) project as a form of CCUS to address global warming.
CO2-EOR is the process of injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into existing oil fields is a well-known EOR technique. The addition of CO2 increases the overall pressure of an oil reservoir, forcing the oil towards production wells.
Nakahara said through this project they aimed to increase oil production while greatly reducing the amount of CO2 that was released into the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Nakahara said the firm had operated a major commercial project in the United States that captures CO2 released from a coal-fired power stations’ flue gas and injected it into an oil field.
Based on the success in PNG, the oil and gas exploration company was planning to conduct joint studies with Indonesia, Malaysia and other oil-producing countries that would help their company to build stronger relationships and acquire new business.
JX Nippon told The National that they would not reveal the monetary value of their shares in the gas project in the country due to confidentiality reasons.
Source : The National / Pacific Mining Watch
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