POSCO pursues future energy cooperation with Malaysia's Petronas

South Korea’s POSCO Group on Sunday said its Chairman Choi Jeong-woo and Petronas Group of Malaysia CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday discussed future-oriented energy cooperation including in carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The Malaysian public energy company is among the world’s top 500 as ranked by the American business magazine Forbes.

“POSCO Group plans to actively engage in CCS and hydrogen to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050,” Choi said at the meeting. “We will join hands with Petronas to build a business model for ‘cross-country carbon capture’ and maintain strong cooperation in hydrogen.”

“Petronas will create solutions to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 based on its CCS and hydrogen units,” Taufik said. “We will form strategic partnerships with companies having similar philosophies in oil and gas as well as the supply of low-carbon energy.”

Since 2021, POSCO and Petronas have studied a plan to collect and transport CO2 emissions from steel plants and store them in Malaysian waters. They will commercialize this research if it yields results.

The two executives in Kuala Lumpur also discussed joint promotion of clean hydrogen projects such those for green hydrogen, which is produced using eco-friendly energy such as wind and solar power, and blue hydrogen, which is made through CCS that reduces CO2 emissions.

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com