The world’s largest greenhouse gas mitigation project undertaken by the LNG industry has started on Barrow Island, Western Australia.

Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan congratulated Chevron Australia, on behalf of the Gorgon Joint Venture, on today’s start up and operation of a carbon dioxide injection system at the Gorgon natural gas facility.

Once fully operational, the system will inject between 3.4 and 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year into a deep underground reservoir.

This is equivalent of removing 680,000 cars from the roads each year.

Minister Canavan said the start up was a red-letter day for the Gorgon Joint Venture and Australian Government in realising Australia’s first large-scale carbon capture and storage project.

“This technology will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the project by roughly 100 million tonnes over the 40-year plus life of the Gorgon project,” Minister Canavan said.

“That is a significant reduction in carbon emissions and a great example of technology being used to support good environmental outcomes in our resources sector.

“Once fully operational, the Gorgon CO2 injection project will make a big contribution to the government’s emission reduction goals.”

Chevron Australia will steadily ramp up injection operations in the months after first injection to ensure the project is operating safely and as planned.

The Australian Government, under the Low Emissions Technology Development Fund (LETDF), contributed $60 million towards the $2.5 billion injection project.