Shell joins new North Sea carbon-capture consortium – in Norway

Three major oil companies have agreed to work on a new joint carbon-capture development in the North Sea.

Shell and Total will work on a carbon capture and storage (CSS) project in the Norwegian sector along with state oil company Statoil.

CO2 captured from onshore industrial facilities in eastern Norway will be transported by ships to a receiving terminal on the west coast and later by pipes to inject in wells east of the Troll field the Norwegian continental shelf.

The first phase of the project could reach a capacity of storing about 1.5 million CO2 tonnes per year

The project is part of Norwegian authorities’ efforts to develop full-scale commercial carbon capture and storage in Norway, where state agency Gassnova awarded Statoil a contract to develop the first phase of the storage project in June.

Trude Sundset, Gassnova’s chief executive, said: “The CO2 storage development is a part of the Norwegian fullscale CCS project.

“The objective for the Norwegian government’s CCS project is to stimulate the development of CCS so the long-time climate targets in Norway and the EU can be reached. This harmonises well with the partners’ plans to give others access to the storage site.”

 In the future, other countries could potentially send CO2 to be stored in Norway – an option highlighted as detrimental to the UK economy in recent expert reports by the Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage consortium of Scots universities.

 The £1bn Goldeneye CCS project off Grampian by Shell and SSE was abandoned three years ago after Brit-Govt funding was withdrawn by the then UK finance minister George Osborne.

Through its CLIMIT research programme, Gassnova grants financial support for development, demonstration and piloting of CCS technologies. The Research Council of Norway is responsible for the research aspects of the programme. Gassnova heads the CLIMIT secretariat.

The goal of CLIMIT is to contribute to establishing this essential environmental technology on an international basis, sooner than would otherwise have been possible.

Gassnova manages the state’s interest in the CO2 Technology Centre Mongstad. The Technology Centre at Mongstad was established with the goal of creating an arena for long-term and targeted development, testing and qualification of technology for CO2 capture. Gassnova will facilitate the sharing and dissemination of these experiences in order to reduce the costs and risks of CO2 capture.

9 Oct 2017