Six companies have applied to the Norwegian government for offshore acreage in the North Sea suitable for the storage of carbon dioxide.
Four of the companies are oil and gas players — Aker BP, Neptune Energy, OMV and Wintershall Dea. One is a Norwegian carbon tech company — Horisont Energi — while the sixth applicant is the marine and offshore company Altera Infrastructure.
The specific acreage for this CO2 storage exercise was announced on 2 November last year, pursuant to the CO2 Storage Regulations.
The plan is to award the acreage before summer of this year, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) said today in a brief statement.
Longship and Northern Lights projects
The NPD said earlier this week there is growing interest in acreage for injection and storage of CO2.
In 2022, three exploration licences for CO2 storage were awarded, one in the Barents Sea and two in the North Sea.
The initial objective of these licences is to determine whether the areas are suitable for CO2 storage.
The NPD's director general Torgeir Stordal said the Longship project will become a reality, while two injection wells were completed in the Northern Lights project.
Good progress was made on construction work at a terminal facility in Oygarden in Vestland county, and construction of the world’s largest CO2 transport vessels is also under way.
Stella Maris CCS project
Altera Infrastructure said today its application for the acreage was linked to its Stella Maris carbon capture and storage project in partnership with Wintershall Dea.
The Stella Maris CCS solution is tailored to collect, transport, inject and store 10 million tonnes per annum of CO2 using collection hubs and large CO2 carriers for transport to a safe and permanent storage site, said Altera.
Additional acreage
The Norwegian government also announced today it has made available a new offshore area for CO2 storage. The area comprises defined blocks in the North Sea.
It is the fifth time that Norway has released CO2 storage acreage on the Norwegian continental shelf.
Read more
- Champions of CCS gear up for fight of a lifetime
- Norway opens new round of applications for CO2 storage in the North Sea
- European Union to provide €3 billion in funding to help CCS projects
- ‘Work to do’: Northern Lights’ boss on the growing potential of CCS in Europe
- Wintershall Dea wins Norway carbon storage licence
