Inpex to resubmit Bonaparte CCS plan as Australia revamps laws

INPEX said it will resubmit an environmental plan for the Bonaparte Carbon Capture and Storage project off northern Australia after temporarily withdrawing its federal referral from the public consultation portal while awaiting clarity on recently revised environment laws. The offshore scheme aims to store roughly 8 million tonnes of CO2 per year, a scale that would outstrip many existing Australian CCS operations.

Company spokespeople said the withdrawal was made “on Sunday” as INPEX awaited the final form of legislative amendments, and that the company remains “fully committed” to progressing the development. No deadline was set for resubmission; INPEX said it will file again once amendments are finalised and following consultation with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW).

The Bonaparte project, promoted by INPEX Operations Australia Pty Ltd with joint-venture partners including TotalEnergies and Woodside Energy, has moved through preliminary engineering since April and received Major Project Status in July. INPEX has positioned Bonaparte as part of a broader plan to create an offshore CCS hub in northern Australia to decarbonise its Ichthys LNG operations and explore cross-border options such as shipping captured CO2 from Japan for permanent storage in Australian geological formations.

Regulatory uncertainty prompted the pause. DCCEEW paused assessment last month to determine whether the federal referral should be assessed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) or under a strategic assessment arrangement with the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA). The department has said resubmitted proposals will be assessed under the government’s reformed environmental laws, enacted in late November and described by Canberra as strengthening compliance and enforcement while streamlining approvals in targeted sectors.

The legislative changes could materially affect the pathway and timing for Bonaparte. A full EPBC assessment typically requires extensive consultation and can lengthen approval timelines, while a strategic assessment with NOPSEMA could consolidate offshore oversight but include different environmental conditions and monitoring regimes. For investors and partners, those procedural differences translate into real timing and cost uncertainty for engineering, financing and vessel scheduling.

Onshore elements are already moving through Northern Territory channels. INPEX filed a separate referral with the Northern Territory government for an inlet station on Middle Arm Peninsula and a roughly 90-kilometre CO2 transport pipeline to the boundary of the territory’s coastal waters. The Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority lists referral documents and said public consultation on the onshore proposal “ends next month” as of January 20, 2026. The NT referral record was last updated on January 12, 2026.

Australia has granted 15 offshore CCS permits since 2022 and operates a handful of sequestration projects, including Santos’ Moomba (about 1.7 million tonnes) and Chevron’s Gorgon project (around 4 million tonnes capacity, with 1.3 million tonnes reported sequestered in the most recent period). By targeting roughly 8 million tonnes a year, Bonaparte would be a substantial increase in national capacity and could anchor a regional CO2 transport and storage network.

Policy outcomes and the final regulatory settings will determine whether that network can be built at the pace needed to meet industry decarbonisation goals. For now, INPEX’s withdrawal and pledge to resubmit leaves the timetable open and highlights the broader tension in Australia’s transition: balancing faster approvals and investment certainty with stronger environmental safeguards and enforcement.