China is planning to capture millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide generated by its energy and steel plants for use in extracting crude oil from the country’s increasingly barren oilfields.

Construction has begun on the Yanchang Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage Project, Asia’s first commercial carbon capture and storage project. Set to begin operations in 2018, Yanchang will capture 410,000 tonnes of carbon a year from a coal-to-gas plant in Shaanxi province, the country’s coal heartland.

The project could mitigate emissions from the notoriously polluting and water-intensive coal-conversion process used by coal-to-gas plants, which the Chinese government has been promoting in the face of slumping coal prices. Captured carbon would be transported by truck 140km to the Qiaojiawa oilfields 20 tonnes at a time, making the Yanchang project the world’s first “full-chain” carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.