ANP Director Pietro Mendes (left) and SFLCT Chairman Fernando C. Hernandez at CERAWeek 2026 in Houston, Texas
“In our mission to advance a low-carbon world, we stand with ‘Ordem e Progresso,’ always working alongside, and never above, our collaborators.”— Fernando C. Hernandez, SFLCT Chairman of the Board
The National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), Brazil’s regulator, partnered with the Society for Low Carbon Technologies (SFLCT) to jointly organize an international Digital Seminar aimed at supporting Brazil’s sovereign CCS pathway. Drawing over 60 participants, the event expanded on prior SFLCT–ANP in-person engagements across the U.S. and Brazil, including recent talks between ANP Director Pietro Mendes and SFLCT Chairman Fernando C. Hernandez in Houston, Texas.
During the seminar, SFLCT and its Advisory Board contributed global hands-on commercial insight, leveraging its Chairman’s work with Bill 1425/2022 (since 2022), now enacted as Brazil’s CCS law. Drawing on sequestration expertise across ethanol, coal power, and oil sands without Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), SFLCT facilitated knowledge exchange linking commercial deployment, governance, and operational protocols.
Significantly, ANP is broadening its CCS oversight as Brazil advances the first commercial CCS project in South America through the ethanol-to-CCS route. Technical guidance for this project comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Class VI Measurement Monitoring and Verification (MMV) requirements for a CO2 injection well (non-EOR).
This achievement aligns closely with SFLCT’s institutional experience from the U.S. Blue Flint Project, which has permanently stored roughly 200,000 tonnes of ethanol-derived CO₂ each year using an EPA Class VI well since 2023. Consequently, the seminar’s roundtable included SFLCT Advisory Board member Zach Liu—Director of Subsurface CCUS at Harvestone Low Carbon Partners and a key figure in Blue Flint’s rollout—who offered operational lessons pertinent to Brazil’s first ethanol-to-CCS venture.
Opening the seminar, SFLCT’s Chairman presented a “Global CCS Overview” and introduced the 2026 Edition of the National Readiness Instrument for CCS (NRIC). Created as a benchmarking tool for scientifically assessing and boosting national preparedness for commercial CCS deployment—spanning South America to South Asia—the NRIC is modeled after NASA’s technology readiness level framework, using space-grade logic to evaluate global CCS readiness through MMV-focused performance.
First revealed in 2025 during the United Nations’ COP30, the NRIC was shared with Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy’s CCS Technical Executive Subcommittee while the CCS Draft Decree was being developed. The Subcommittee included key participants such as SFLCT, ANP, and the developer of Brazil’s first CCS project. The Draft Decree now awaits final executive review to fully implement Brazil’s CCS law.
Underlying the NRIC’s benchmarking approach is the operational know-how institutionally represented by SFLCT. Notably, the framework integrates MMV data from the Blue Flint Project and Shell Canada’s Quest CCS Project—the first commercial-scale CCS facility in the Western Hemisphere, which has permanently stored millions of tonnes of CO2 since 2015.
Drawing from his expertise at Quest, SFLCT Advisory Board member Dr. Matt Flannery developed Quest’s foundational fluid characterization and monitoring program. Speaking as Director of Geoscience and Engineering at Stratum Reservoir, he delivered “From the Western Hemisphere’s First CCS Project in Canada to U.S. Class VI Implementation: Technical Lessons Learned and Optimization Strategies,” showing how subsurface data and MMV methods apply to Brazil’s CCS industry.
Furthermore, SFLCT Advisory Board member Stephen Pattee, P.G., Senior Vice President at Lonquist & Co., presented “Insights from Supporting 120+ U.S. Class VI Projects and Canada’s First Coal-Fired Power CCS Project in a Deep Saline Formation.” His talk also referenced Lonquist & Co.’s work on Canada’s Aquistore Project (included in the NRIC), reflecting his direct knowledge of how Class VI projects move from concept to injection.
The organization’s broad international experience shows that SFLCT and the NRIC are grounded in real-world CCS deployment. Hernandez concluded, “In our mission to advance a low-carbon world, we stand with ‘Ordem e Progresso,’ always working alongside, and never above, our collaborators.”
*Publishing note: The views expressed are those of the SFLCT, a federally recognized U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organizations or individuals referenced herein. This publication is shared for educational, community-impact, and non-commercial purposes. No endorsement is implied. This publication aligns with SFLCT’s federally exempt status.*
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