Hyundai E&C signed a research and development agreement with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on the 21st (Monday), to secure carbon-related technologies and storages abroad, and will participate in the research with seven civil, government, and academic institutions for a total of 28 months.

The selected national project is "International Joint Research to Advance CCUS Commercial Technology and Secure Overseas Storage," which aims to strengthen CCUS-related technology capabilities essential for achieving carbon neutrality and select candidate sites to safely store CO₂ emitted in Korea, in *depleted oil and gas fields in Southeast Asia. 

* The depleted reservoir (the layer where crude oil and natural gas are collected and stacked underground) is easy to use as a CO₂ reservoir because geoprospecting has been already done and spaces have been secured.

Seven civil, government, and academic consortiums, including Hyundai E&C, Korea National Oil Corporation, Hyundai Heavy Industries, SK Innovation, Golden Engineering, Dong-a University, and UTP (Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS) will jointly participate in the study, and the company in demand is Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering. 

This consortium assesses the feasibility of the CO₂ storage through safety and storage capacity evaluation and economic analysis of 16 depleted oil and gas fields owned by Malaysia's state-run energy company Petronas. The move is aimed at securing promising candidate sites ahead of the opening of the global carbon capture and storage market to preoccupy overseas CO₂ storage sites and to achieve the national greenhouse gas reductions goal by transporting and storing CO₂ captured in Korea.

In this process, Hyundai E&C will establish a standard model for the project, such as the criteria for selecting the project site, design of transportation networks, and technical requirements for offshore injection platform and derive actual applications for overseas carbon capture and storage projects. It also plans to draw suggestions that can be reflected in the national carbon capture and storage promotion policy based on the global partnership established through this project.

Hyundai E&C is in charge of developing business models across the entire cycle of carbon capture and storage from designing domestic CO₂ capture to transportation network and import/export hub terminal, injection facility and analyzing economic feasibility. Based on this study, the company plans to enhance its construction and operational competitiveness of offshore CO₂ underground storage projects at home and abroad, and calculate accurate business costs and secure core design technologies to strengthen its capabilities from FEED (Front End Engineering Design) to EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction). 

The “International Joint Research to Advance CCUS Commercial Technology and Secure Overseas Storage” is being carried out simultaneously in various oil-producing countries, including Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, and the Netherlands. Hyundai E&C is also participating in research on “CCS (carbon capture and storage) optimal storage design and facility conversion technology” using depleted gas fields in the Netherlands as well as Southeast Asia and is establishing a cooperative system with leading technology powerhouses.

Meanwhile, Hyundai E&C is making all-out efforts to secure global technology competitiveness through researches across all CCUS value chains by designing wet capture facility capable of capturing large amounts of CO₂ and conducting “development of CO₂ capture, liquefaction and utilization technology for blue hydrogen production” by leading the national project of the Ministry of Science and ICT. 

"We are laying the foundation for leading overseas carbon capture and storage projects through international joint research," a Hyundai E&C official said. "We will do our best to realize carbon neutrality by expanding opportunities to participate in carbon capture and storage projects through continued research and development of core design technologies and building a system to actively respond to new energy transition projects."