Just outside of Harvey in WA’s south-west, CSIRO has successfully completed its landmark Harvey 5 well drilling operation, marking a milestone for the future of carbon management.
CSIRO’s In-Situ Laboratory (ISL) became a hive of activity in March and April with the arrival of a large drilling rig and its associated support infrastructure.
Under the scrutiny of industrial, government and scientific observers from across Australia and around the globe, a CSIRO project team and drill rig, well construction and research partners successfully drilled more than 1000m below the surface, directly into and through a major fault zone.
But why?
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a carbon management method that injects carbon dioxide (CO2) deep underground in a dense phase under high pressure. Understanding the risks of CO2 leaking up to surface via a fault is essential for industry and regulators to safely use CCS as a mainstream emissions reduction tool to help achieve upcoming net zero targets.
CSIRO’s energy research focuses on three major themes: accelerating the electricity transition; decarbonising the industry and transport sectors; and carbon management technologies, of which CCS is a part.
The Harvey 5 well drilling operation was a high-risk, high stakes, and high precision operation.
Fault zones often feature crushed, unstable material and rock formations with reduced strength, all of which can cause a drill rig to get stuck, resulting in an expensive failure.
CSIRO principal research engineer and ISL project lead, Dr Ludovic Ricard, acknowledged that the program was “a little daunting”.
Harvey 5 is a CO2 injection well, and Harvey 6 – drilled in 2024 – is an adjacent monitoring well. Both wells cross the fault zone and are packed with various monitoring technologies.
The successful completion of Harvey 5 enables the next phase of fluid injection and monitoring programs in a major fault zone.
“Normally when planning projects, you avoid faults,” Dr Ricard said. “But we are trying to answer the question that everyone asks: how do faults behave in the CCS context?
“We are deliberately undertaking a worst-case scenario, drilling a well into a fault, and we plan to directly inject supercritical CO2 to see what happens.”
According to the International Energy Agency, CCS is one of a group of carbon-management technologies contributing to direct emissions reduction in key sectors and removing CO2 to balance unavoidable emissions.
As commercial-scale CCS projects increase, so does the interest in potential risks of CO2 reaching unmapped faults. However, field data can inform models and improve predictive forecasting of risks or impacts for regulators and project proponents.
That’s where the ISL comes in. It’s a collaboration between CSIRO and the Japanese Government’s Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), in conjunction with the Federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, and the WA Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety.
With clearly stated emissions reduction goals, Japan is keenly interested in cutting-edge CCS research. The ISL provides contemporary, science-based evidence to inform cost-effective, safe and reliable CCS projects while providing a long-term field site for domestic and international education and training, capacity development and technology testing in the CCS environment.
Dr Ricard said the growth in CCS projects demands a deeper understanding of how CO2 interacts with these geological features.
“That’s why we are doing this,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty which needs to be reduced to enable safe and cost-effective CCS projects. “It’s not just about science. It’s also about education, economics and community engagement because, in the end, community support is required, cost-effective monitoring systems would help with that, and the results and learnings need to be applicable to real-world commercial applications.”
CSIRO Energy Resources Program Research Director, Dr Damian Barrett, said the organisation has been at the forefront of CCS research and development over the past 25 years.
“Most CCS projects in Australia have sought CSIRO’s expertise at some stage,” Dr Barrett said.
“We have broad capabilities in the science that underpins carbon capture, utilisation and storage [CCUS] technology and a strong track record working on demonstration and operational projects.”
Through the ISL, international collaborations and research participation at Victoria’s CO2CRC Otway International Test Centre, CSIRO’s research experience and capabilities are wide-ranging. From large-scale demonstration projects to laboratory-scale experiments to dynamic modelling, the research is enabling substantial emissions reduction and provides a pathway for industry to adopt carbon management technologies at scale.
CSIRO has operated point-source CO2 capture pilot programs at power plants in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria for more than a decade, generating valuable information on the technical, economic and environmental performance of leading absorption-based technologies.
This work has also contributed to the development of an advanced capture technology, licensed overseas, with international collaboration involving industrial partners from Norway, China, Japan and the US.
Another key research area for CSIRO is direct air capture (DAC), where CO2 is removed directly from the ambient air through chemical processes. This newer carbon management approach has emerging opportunities in Australia, Europe and the US.
CSIRO’s collaborative work to progress DAC includes Airthena, CarbonAssist and the Ambient CO2 Harvester.
Assessing the potential role of CO2 in a future low-emissions economy is also a central focus. In 2021, CSIRO published the CO2 Utilisation Roadmap, which explores the opportunities for Australia to support new industries and reduce carbon emissions with emerging CCUS technologies.
CO2 can be combined with other feedstocks such as hydrogen to make new low-emissions products and replace high-emissions materials like fossil fuels. This is a key component in CSIRO’s investigation into specific opportunities for CO2 utilisation in Western Australia and the Northern Territory as part of low-emissions CCUS hubs.
CSIRO published reports in 2024 to help inform the business case for a low-emissions hub at the proposed NT Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct near Darwin.
Additional work by CSIRO and the Global CCS Institute as part of the CCUS Hubs Study assessed the potential role of CCUS in decarbonising Western Australia’s industries.
These studies found CCUS hub models could deliver significant benefits as the technology can be implemented immediately, with potential to work across a range of emissions-intensive and hard to abate industries.
Back at the ISL, the site is being readied for the 2025–26 research program, in which fluids will be injected into and below the fault zone, generating a wealth of data about fluid movement and the performance of various monitoring technologies.
The keenly anticipated research results will be featured as part of discussions at the Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies Conference (GHGT-18), to be co-hosted by CSIRO in Perth on 26–29 October 2026.
For more information research, visit csiro.au/energy
