Korea’s POSCO Int’l to work on CCUS, hydrogen businesses

POSCO International Corp., the general trading and resources exploration subsidiary of South Korea’s steel giant POSCO Holdings Inc., aims to work on the carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), as well as hydrogen businesses to seek a future growth driver in the eco-friendly energy sector.

POSCO International said on Monday it added the CCUS and the manufacturing, storage and transportation of hydrogen and hydrogen compounds into its business purposes in a financial regulatory filing. The CCUS refers to technologies that capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and utilize it or store it safely underground so that it does not contribute to climate change.

POSCO International has already been seeking the commercialization of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) business.

The company, along with global partners such as Spanish energy giant Repsol S.A., was named as a preferred bidder for a contract for over 140,000 gross acres of pore space owned by the Permanent School Fund (PSF) for carbon dioxide storage located offshore Corpus Christi, Texas, last year. The South Korean firm also joined forces with Malaysia’s energy firm Petroleum Sarawak Bhd to push ahead with a CCS project in Sarawak, Malaysia in December 2022.

For the hydrogen business, POSCO International teamed up with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the state-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates, in January.

ENERGY INVESTMENT

POSCO International set aside 1 trillion won ($745.4 million) in 2024 to develop its energy business into the group’s No. 3 growth engine after the steel and electric vehicle battery material businesses. POSCO Holdings is the parent of the world’s No. 7 steelmaker POSCO and South Korea’s major battery material supplier POSCO Future M Co.

POSCO International is set to triple the natural gas production capacity at Senex Energy Ltd. for the upstream energy sector. The South Korean company purchased a 50.1% stake in the Australian gas producer in 2022.

In the midstream sector, it will complete the expansion of an energy tank in South Korea to store 200,000 tons of natural gas by June.

POSCO International is scheduled to break ground on driving motor core plants in Poland and Mexico this year with a goal of expanding its production capacity of the electric vehicle parts to 7 million units by 2030.

For food trading, the company will import a total of 1.8 million tons of food and foodstuffs this year while starting the construction of a palm oil refining plant in Indonesia in a partnership with GS Caltex Corp., a joint venture between South Korea’s GS Energy Corp. and US Chevron Corp., in the first half.

Write to Hyung-Kyu Kim at khk@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.