POSCO Inter, Developing Offshore Carbon Storage Site in the US... First Domestic Company to Do So

POSCO International is participating in the development project of an offshore carbon storage site in the United States for the first time among domestic companies.

POSCO International announced on the 6th that it was selected as the preferred negotiator in the international bidding for the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project hosted by the Texas General Land Office in the United States.

POSCO International participated in this bidding as part of a consortium with global energy companies including Spain's Repsol, the U.S. Carbonvert, and Japan's Mitsui America. Its stake is 10%. The project area covers 578 km² offshore near Corpus Christi, Texas, which is similar in size to Seoul. The consortium will decide whether to proceed with development after evaluating the storage site.

If development proceeds, drilling, platform installation, and subsea pipeline installation will enable the injection of carbon dioxide into the storage site for several decades. The estimated carbon storage capacity exceeds 600 million tons, which is equivalent to South Korea's annual carbon emissions.

The CCS project is a technology that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently stores it underground. It is one of the most direct methods to block carbon, the main cause of global warming, from entering the atmosphere.

The United States provides subsidies of up to $85 per ton to companies reducing carbon through CCS under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The U.S. is the most active country in CCS projects worldwide and the only country where carbon emission reductions can directly generate profits.

The Texas coast is densely populated with various emission sources, including power plants, cement, petrochemical, and gas refining facilities. Numerous oil and gas pipelines are already established, facilitating carbon capture. Corpus Christi, the project area, is also located on the Texas coast, close to both emission sources and storage sites, reducing development costs.

POSCO International, which merged with POSCO Energy earlier this year, has been actively promoting CCS projects as part of its vision to become a global eco-friendly integrated business company. POSCO International plans to leverage its experience and capabilities accumulated since the 1990s through offshore gas field development to enter the CCS business. The gas field business, which extracts natural gas from the seabed, and the CCS business, which injects carbon dioxide into the seabed, have similar characteristics in reverse. POSCO International plans to establish a new company in the U.S. in September and actively pursue additional CCS projects following this project.

A POSCO International official said, "This project will serve as a foundation for simultaneously pursuing global carbon reduction and sustainable growth," adding, "We will use this opportunity to continuously expand our eco-friendly portfolio and contribute to POSCO Group's realization of carbon neutrality by 2050."