Premier Peter Malinauskas has kicked off a three-day Upper Spencer Gulf summit at the Whyalla Steelworks

Premier Peter Malinauskas has visited the Upper Spencer Gulf with some of the state’s biggest companies to sign a revolutionary agreement.

Whyalla’s high-polluting steelworks is poised to start its green transition through major deals for hydrogen supply and carbon capture and storage, inked at the start of Premier Peter Malinauskas’s major economic summit.

Kicking off the three-day Upper Spencer Gulf summit, Mr Malinauskas joined steelworks operator GFG Alliance and the state’s biggest company, Santos, to sign the green steel agreements.

Premier Peter Malinauskas in the Upper Spencer Gulf Whyalla Steelworks. Picture: Ben Clark

Hailed by Santos chief Kevin Gallagher as a significant step for the state, the steelworks deal involves talks to become the first domestic third-party customer for Santos’s flagship carbon capture storage project at Moomba, in the state’s far northeast, as well as gas supply.

In a separate deal, the state government and GFG will negotiate a supply agreement from the $593m government-owned hydrogen power plant to be built near Whyalla, to fuel green iron production.

Upper Spencer Gulf. Whyalla Steelworks. Picture: Ben Clark

Mr Malinauskas said the economic summit, billed as a State Prosperity Project, would show South Australians the multiple investments coming together that amounted to a big opportunity to boost SA’s wealth.

“We’re into discussions with GFG to have an offtake agreement with them, so they can potentially decarbonise their steel operations here as they enter into discussions with Santos to achieve the same objective, all part of our effort to improve the state’s prosperity on the back of the global decarbonisation of industry,” he said.

“We are talking about thousands of jobs, well paid, secure, highly remunerated jobs. That’s what is at the end of the line for us here.”

The Premier speaking at the Whyalla Steelworks Presser. Picture: Ben Clark

GFG Alliance executive chairman Sanjeev Gupta said being a key offtakes for the supply of green hydrogen from the world’s largest electrolyser being built at Whyalla was “a real privilege”.

“This step is vital in our plans to produce premium green iron and steel in Whyalla and a huge boost to Australia’s determination to lead the world in decarbonisation,” he said.

Mr Gallagher, Santos’s chief executive officer, said the $220m Moomba CCS project, which involves safely and permanently storing 1.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, was more than 80 per cent complete and moving into a commissioning phase ahead of coming online mid-year.

Santos chief Kevin Gallagher speaking at the Upper Spencer Gulf. Whyalla Steelworks Presser. Picture: Ben Clark

Mr Gallagher said “Moomba coming on and working and demonstrating to all the naysayers and the doubters out there that Moomba CCS is a success” would help accelerate overseas agreements and demonstrate the potential to domestic industries in hard-to-abate sectors.

Mr Malinauskas also revealed global energy giant GE had been selected as preferred turbine supplier for the hydrogen power plant.

Asked by The Advertiser how the State Prosperity Project centred on the Upper Spencer Gulf would benefit Adelaide people now and into the future, Mr Malinauskas evoked WA’s mining industry, arguing the wealth generated from that “allows governments to be liberated about how they invest in their people’s schools and hospitals and the like”.

Upper Spencer Gulf. Whyalla Steelworks. Picture: Ben Clark

“By generating new forms of wealth, and jobs with higher wages, what we start to see is people’s standard of living improve. Put that in a bit of context the average South Australian income sits at around about $77,000 per annum - in a mining industry it’s in excess of $130,000 per annum. That is a big differential. So the more people we can take from low-paid industries into highly skilled, high-paid industries is better for those families and also communities around them,” he said.