Santos taps solar to pump gas in Cooper Basin

Australian oil and gas giant Santos, last year chastised by its own shareholders for doing the bare minimum on climate change, appears to be making some sort of an effort in 2018, including with the conversion of its first “beam pump” to solar in South Australia.
The small, but noteworthy milestone – which will see the pictured Cooper Basin well pump powered with clean, renewable energy, instead of crude oil – was fairly quietly announced through social media channels only, including on Twitter and the LinkedIn post below.

The installation is separate to the fossil fuel giant’s recently formed partnership with Adelaide-based ZEN Energy, which was mainly aimed at pairing natural gas generation with large-scale renewables on the South Australia grid.
But in a statement at the time, Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher said that the partnership opened up “exciting opportunities for Santos to introduce solar energy into our gas processing and transport operations in South Australia and Queensland, lowering our production costs and freeing up gas for release into the domestic Australian market.”