Statoil, Shell, Total partner on Norway CCS project

Statoil ASA is leading a new partnership with Norske Shell AS and Total E&P Norge AS to develop a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project on the Norwegian continental shelf.

The project will store carbon dioxide captured from onshore industrial facilities in Eastern Norway, with a first-phase capacity of up to 1.5 million tonnes/year before possible future expansions.

Carbon dioxide will be transported from the capture facilities by ship to a receiving terminal on the west coast of Norway. At the receiving terminal, the CO₂ will be transferred to intermediate storage tanks before being sent through a pipeline on the seabed to injection wells east of Troll field on the NCS.

Three possible locations for the receiving terminal have been identified, and a final selection will be made later this year.

The partners say the project will have “the potential to be the first storage project site in the world receiving CO₂ from industrial sources in several countries,” and they hope it will “stimulate new commercial carbon capture projects in Norway, Europe, and more globally.”

The collaboration is expected to serve as a basis for establishing an expanded partnership for the construction and operational phases.

In June Norway state-owned CCS firm Gassnova SF awarded Statoil a contract for concept and front-end engineering design studies for the project. Statoil has experience with CCS on the NCS via Snohvit and Sleipner fields, the latter of which has stored 17 million tonnes of CO₂ over the last 20 years.

“Statoil believes that without carbon capture and storage, it is not realistic to meet the global climate target as defined in the Paris Agreement,” Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil executive vice-president for new energy solutions commented.

“A massive scale up of number of CCS projects is needed, and collaboration and sharing of knowledge are essential to accelerating the development.”