Japan’s biggest oil & gas company has taken a final investment decision on a blue hydrogen project in central Japan that will produce H2 from domestic fossil gas and use the captured CO2 to extract more fossil gas from the same site.

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Tokyo-based Inpex, a fossil-fuel exploration and production company with operations around the world, will produce 700 tonnes of blue hydrogen per year at a gas field that it operates in Kashiwazaki city, Niigata prefecture. Carbon dioxide produced from the methane reforming process will be captured and injected into a subsurface reservoir for enhanced gas recovery — although it is not clear what proportion of the CO2 generated will be captured.

A portion of the H2 from the demonstration project — scheduled to run until the end of the financial year in 2025 — will be used to produce blue ammonia, with the remainder being used for power production.

The pilot has five aims: to demonstrate the production of blue hydrogen and the supply of electricity using it; to produce ammonia using a “recently developed low-temperature, low-pressure synthesis process”; to evaluate and verify CO2 storage in depleted oil & gas fields in Japan; to confirm the enhanced gas recovery process; and the safe injection of CO2.

According to a document published by Inpex in March, the site will capture 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. It also stated that one of the aims of the Kashiwazaki project is to “secure a greater volume of resources through underground injection of CO2 emitted from the reforming process”.

Inpex says it aims to commercialise three or more blue hydrogen projects by “around 2030”, including one in Niigata, producing 100,000 tonnes or more of H2 or ammonia per year.

Blue hydrogen is defined as H2 produced from natural gas with carbon capture, utilisation and storage.