Australia has formally declared the West Peron geological formation in the Bonaparte Basin an identified greenhouse gas storage site — the country's first regulatory recognition of an offshore saline aquifer for carbon storage, clearing a path for up to 443 million tons of CO2 to be injected over 35 years.

The federal declaration covers a formation roughly 160 miles off the coast of Darwin, Northern Territory. INPEX Browse E&P operates the Bonaparte CCS project with a 53% interest, alongside TotalEnergies CCS Australia (26%) and Woodside Energy (21%).

What does the declaration actually authorize?

It verifies that the subsea saline formation meets the technical criteria for safe, permanent CO2 sequestration. That's it. It does not green-light injection.

Before any CO2 goes underground, the joint venture must:

• Complete ongoing environmental impact assessments. Northern Territory regulators approved the project's Environmental Impact Statement terms of reference in July 2026.
• Secure additional commercial agreements.
• Reach a Final Investment Decision (FID).

In short: the geology is signed off; the project is not. The declaration converts an exploration-stage question into an engineering-and-permitting one.

Who is the anchor customer?

The Ichthys LNG facility, also operated by INPEX, sits nearby and anchors the business case. Sequestration in the Bonaparte reservoir is projected to cut Ichthys LNG's operational CO2 emissions by roughly 40%, supporting the company's decarbonization commitments under its Vision 2035 framework.

That 40% figure matters because it ties the storage site to a single, identifiable emissions stream rather than a speculative third-party market — at least for the first phase.

How did we get here?

The declaration follows years of site characterization and regulatory positioning. The joint venture launched pre-Front-End Engineering and Design (pre-FEED) studies in April 2025. One month later, in July 2025, Canberra granted the project federal Major Project Status.

The timeline since then has been short but consequential: pre-FEED, major project status, and now formation recognition inside roughly two years.

What happens next?

The partners still target initial CO2 injection in the early 2030s. Long term, they want to scale Bonaparte Basin infrastructure into a regional decarbonization hub — collecting and storing emissions from third-party industrial sources across northern Australia.

That third-party ambition remains an announced intention, not built capacity. The hard milestone to watch is FID, which depends on the environmental assessments now underway and on commercial agreements that are not yet in place.

The West Peron declaration makes the storage target credible; the FID makes it real.