Corrib south12 Oct 2025 00:15
From Todays’s Sunday business post :
Operators of Corrib gas field placed on list of EU’s largest polluters
The operators of Ireland’s only gas field have added to a European Commission list of Europe’s largest polluters.
Nephin Energy and an Irish subsidiary of Vermillion, which operate the Corrib gas field off the coast of Mayo, face large penalties if they do not cut carbon emissions by 2030.
Commission head Ursula von der Leyen has signed off on new rules that require oil and gas producers to reduce their emissions by 50 million tonnes annually until 2030.
They are obliged to create carbon storage which they can inject their emissions into, rather than allow them to circulate in the atmosphere.
Both Nephin and Vermillion must store one million tonnes per year in line with their production at the Corrib field. Producers will face “proportionate and dissuasive penalties” if they do not act now to reduce their emissions by the end of the decade, according to the legislation.
The news is a blow for Vermillion, which is Canadian-owned, and whose parent company had lobbied for exclusion from the list at European level.
In a consultation submission seen by the Business Post, Vermillion had told the commission it “objects to the obligation” imposed by the bloc’s net zero policy.
The company, which has other gas and oil extraction businesses throughout Europe, said that the 2030 deadline is “unrealistic” and does not give sufficient time for the development of storage projects.
Meeting notes obtained by the Business Post through a Freedom of Information request show that the company raised the new rules at a meeting held with energy minister Darragh O’Brien over the summer.
Jarlath Trench, who leads the firm’s Irish operations, informed the minister that three of the Corrib leases, two of which are owned by Vermillion, have fallen under the new rules.
Vermillion is the largest shareholder in Corrib, while Nephin is Dublin-based but backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Several attempts were made to reach Vermillion on Friday.
Nephin, which is led by Tom O’Brien, said in a statement that it is “compliant with the requirements applicable to date and are engaging with the relevant government departments in relation to potential future obligations”.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Corrib’s gas production reached a peak in 2017, when it met 63 per cent of Ireland’s gas demand. It currently accounts for around 20 per cent of the population’s needs, a figure that is expected to drop by 10 per cent by 2030. It is likely to completely run out of gas within a decade.
In 2024, Vermillion and Nephin launched an initiative called Atlantic Energy at Corrib, where they outlined that a wish to “develop a sustainable energy plan” for the gas field that would see its infrastructure transitioned to renewable energy production.
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