A climate activist group has filed a lawsuit against South Korea's largest private gas provider, SK E&S Co., alleging that it falsely touted the green credentials of a project in Australia.

SK is being sued by Solutions for Our Climate for calling liquefied natural gas from its Barossa project off Australia's northern coast "CO2-free."

While SK claims to trap greenhouse gases created during LNG production, the organization contends that it only does so partially and does nothing about CO2 released when the gas is consumed, which accounts for the vast majority of emissions.

SK will use carbon capture and sequestration to eliminate 60% of the project's emissions, which adds up to four million tons per year, and will plant trees to offset the rest, according to Kim Hyejin, communications executive officer at SK E&S.

“As a major LNG supplier in South Korea, we’re trying our best to stay responsible by actively investing in clean technology such as CCS to help reduce emissions and be part of the transition toward net zero,” Kim said.

The action comes in light of a wave of environmentalists suing big fossil fuel suppliers. 

Seoul-based SFOC said it’s handing the case to the Korea Fair Trade Commission and the Ministry of Environment, which will decide whether or not to go forward with an investigation.

South Korea's SK E&S Co.

SK has plans to spend $1.4 billion developing the Barossa-Caldita gas fields in Australia, in which it has a 37.5% stake.

In March, the company released a statement revealing that it expects to produce 1.3 million tons of LNG evry year for 20 years as of 2025 and to use carbon-capture technology to remove CO2 emitted from its LNG plant and inject it into a nearby marine waste gas field.

If the process is a success, around 2.1 million tons of emissions will be removed every year, the group said. Another 11.4 million tons a year will still be emitted, mostly from burning the fuel as well as transporting it across oceans, it said.