On Friday last week (10 September), Norway’s oil and energy ministry announced it had two offshore sites for potential carbon dioxide storage development for those companies interested. Applicants have until 9 December to submit any requests to progress CO2 storage solutions in the region.
One site is located east of the North Sea Troll gas field, while the other is northeast of the Goliat oilfield in the Barents Sea. The government has said interest has already been expressed by ‘several players in the industry’.
Commenting on the announcement, Tina Bru, Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Norwegian Government, said, “Capture and storage of CO2 is an area where Norway has a unique opportunity to really make a difference on the way to a global low-emission society. Norway has unique experience and expertise from the Sleipner- and Snøhvit-fields and not least the test center at Mongstad.”
“With today’s announcement, we are facilitating more Norwegian projects for CO2 management,” she added. It is nice to see that the industry is now investing and showing interest in CO2 storage. This shows there is potential for a new and important industry on the Norwegian continental shelf.”
While the Scandinavian nation made its money on the North Sea deposits of oil and gas, but climate consciousness has seen Norway forging ahead with its clean agenda in recent years, with carbon capture and storage (CCS) a potentially key part of this. According to CO2 Storage Norway, CCS could see reductions of up to 33% of global emissions by 2050 and at the beginning of this year the country announced it would be putting $1.8bn of public money towards full-scale implementation of CCS technologies as the country works towards its decarbonisation targets. This scheme has been dubbed the ‘Longship project’, and sets a stable foundation for the country’s transition to a clean energy future.
An offshore storage site is already under development by Norwegian oil and gas major Equinor, in collaboration with Shell and TotalEnergies, with the location expected to store up to 1.5m tonnes of CO2 from 2024 onwards. There is then capacity to expand to 5m tonnes in following years.
Reference:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/norway-offers-two-new-offshore-areas-co2-storage-2021-09-10/
https://www.gasworld.com/norwegian-government-announces-areas-ready-for-co2-storage/2021696.article
