Oil and gas companies rank among the key adopters of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), according to a report carried by Sustainability Online. The finding places upstream and downstream operators — rather than utilities or heavy industry alone — at the centre of the technology's commercial rollout.

The designation matters for an industry under pressure to cut scope 1 and 2 emissions while sustaining hydrocarbon throughput. For refiners, CCUS offers a route to decarbonise hydrogen production, fluid catalytic crackers and process heat. For upstream players, depleted reservoirs and saline aquifers near existing infrastructure provide storage capacity that few other industrial sectors can access.

The report's core claim is simple: operators are not peripheral buyers of capture technology but principal ones. Sustainability Online identifies the oil and gas sector as being among the primary groups now deploying CCUS at project level.

Why does the label matter?

Oil and gas companies bring three assets that CCUS projects elsewhere struggle to secure:

• Subsurface expertise in reservoir characterisation, injection and monitoring, built over decades of enhanced oil recovery work;
• Existing pipeline networks and wellstock that lower the cost of moving and injecting CO2;
• Balance sheets large enough to carry multi-year, capital-intensive projects before carbon markets or tax credits fully offset spend.

That combination explains why operators appear repeatedly among the investor groups behind capture and storage ventures, and why service companies have built out dedicated CO2 handling lines.

Where does this leave refiners?

Refinery applications concentrate on hydrogen units, where steam methane reformers produce a concentrated CO2 stream that is comparatively cheap to capture. Capture from stack flue gas — crackers, heaters, boilers — costs more because the CO2 is dilute, which is why refiners tend to sequence hydrogen first.

The sector's adoption pattern also reflects policy exposure. Refiners and producers operating in jurisdictions with carbon pricing or storage tax incentives have moved earlier than those without, and the report's framing of oil and gas as a leading adopter tracks that uneven geography.

What is the watch item?

The open questions are cost and offtake. Capture economics still hinge on incentive schemes, CO2 purchase agreements for utilisation routes, and credible storage liability transfer. Watch the next wave of final investment decisions on integrated capture-and-storage hubs serving refining clusters — those timings, more than announcements, will show whether the sector's leading-adopter status translates into contracted capacity.

Sustainability Online's report adds no project-level figures, but its classification confirms the direction of travel: operators are treating CCUS as core infrastructure, not peripheral compliance spending.