Pilot Energy (ASX:PGY) has announced it’s moving its HQ to Perth to be closer to the Cliff Head carbon capture project, of which it will soon be the 100% owner.
The company is now on the hunt for operations and financial chiefs based in WA with pre-FEED documents for its carbon play to be completed next month. Pilot is also developing a “clean energy ammonia export project.”
In the meantime, executive chair Brad Lingo will become Managing Director while he looks to beef up the board as well.
While the company’s Ammonia project remains its flagship, the nature of Pilot’s announcement on Wednesday underscores a problem that is consistent within investor-facing communications regarding carbon capture ambitions.
If you stepped back and let energy companies have the floor all day, the average Australian investor may be led into thinking that large carbon capture facilities are working all around the world and that we’re on the path to a bright new future.
We aren’t.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has itself called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) an “unproven technology that cannot meet planetary CO2 mitigation needs.”
Once you get past the feel-good spin and look-here-not-there distractions, no company on earth has actually been able to make a large-scale CCS plant work properly.
That isn’t to say people aren’t genuinely trying. Chevron has sunk billions into its WA-based North West Shelf (NWS) assets to try and make CCS work, and has ended up spending more than it meant to.
One may also note this enables it to access R&D rebates, but, that’s a different article.
The IPCC has also noted that even if CCS worked, it would only capture enough carbon to reflect roughly 2.4% of needed reductions to meet Paris Agreement targets. I’ve already written for this masthead about how the world isn’t going to satisfy the Paris Agreement.
All of that said – if Pilot Energy can figure out CCS, well, that’s one way to land on the map.
PGY shares last traded at 2.4cps.