Equinor, Shell, Total Apply to Store CO2 Off Norway
Norway's upstream regulator said September 10 that the new Northern Lights consortium had applied for permission to inject and store carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Norwegian Shelf
The Norwegian petroleum directorate (NPD) said that the consortium – state-controlled Equinor along with its European partners Shell and Total – submitted an application September 7 for an exploitation permit for a subsea reservoir for injection and storage of CO2. The regulator said this was "the very first time the authorities have announced a licensing round for injection and storage of CO2" but acknowledged that Northern Lights was the only applicant when the deadline for permits expired at noon September 7.
Northern Lights' head of permitting Per Gunnar Stavland said the consortium looked forward to "further dialogue about this project through the autumn" with the government and NPD.
Equinor (then Statoil), Shell and Total signed a partnership agreement last October to advance carbon storage offshore Norway. All three majors have spoken of a need to develop carbon storage: for around a decade Equinor has operated carbon storage at its Sleipner gasfield and Snohvit LNG in Norway and also at In Salah field onshore Algeria; Shell for two years has had a fully operating 'Quest' CCS plant in Alberta, western Canada that can sequester more than 1mn mt of CO2/yr from high-carbon oil sands production.
Full-scale CO2 capture and storage in Norway
The Norwegian authorities announced the relevant area open for licensing on July 5. State Secretary Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde, of the right of centre Progress Party, said then that the announcement was a concrete follow-up of the government’s ambitions for full-scale CO2 capture and storage in Norway, and an important element of the work on the storage part.
The ambition is to achieve a cost-effective solution for full-scale CO2 capture and storage in Norway; awards in that context are expected to be made during 4Q 2018. “In a similar manner as with the award of production licences, the NPD will evaluate the geotechnical work and provide advice to the Ministry prior to an award,” said NPD assistant director for exploration, Wenche Tjelta Johansen, .
State clean energy developer Gassnova mid-2017 gave Equinor the task of evaluating a carbon storage site that would be the first in the world to receive CO2 from multiple industrial sources onshore Norway.
Progress to develop such schemes elsewhere has been slow: a task force set up by the UK government said two such clusters should be developed by the mid-2020s in Britain but skimmed over the financing pitfalls, while global utility Engie's head of gas assets has expressed concerns about whether such large-scale carbon capture and storage is technically feasible, saying the corrosive nature of the gas meant that it could only be safely injected in rocks that had previously held acid gas.
The International Energy Agency has said that Carbon Capture, Use and Storage deployment will be critical if the world is to achieve the Paris climate change of capping global warming by 2050 at 2°C above pre-industrial levels. However, the latest forecast by DNV GL poured cold water on that hope, predicting a 2.6 °C rise by 2050.
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The Northern Lights project submits its application to inject and store CO2 on September 7: from left, Diego Alejandro Vazquez Anzola (Shell), Laurence Pinturier (Total), Per Gunnar Stavland (Equinor), Eva Hallund and Wenche Tjelta Johansen (both NPD)
(Photo credit: NPD/Arne Bjoroen)