European gas producers form Dutch CCS project

French TotalEnergies, Anglo-Dutch Shell, Dutch Energie Beheer Nederland (EBN) and the national transmission company Gasunie have launched Aramis, a carbon capture and storage (CCS) partnership. It will sequester CO₂ emitted from the most CO₂ intensive industrial clusters in the Netherlands, they said September 7.

As the price of carbon certificates in the European trading scheme rises, CCS becomes an ever more affordable option, although the costs will be passed on to the consumers. 

Advertisement: The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (NGC) NGC’s HSSE strategy is reflective and supportive of the organisational vision to become a leader in the global energy business. ngc.co.tt

The partners' work will entail developing CO₂ transport infrastructure to enable offshore CO₂ storage. Aramis is looking to take final investment decision by 2023 with an operational start-up in 2026. The project aims to make an important contribution to the CO₂ reduction targets for 2030, as laid down in the Dutch National Climate Agreement and the European Union’s Green Deal.

The industries Aramis is targeting include steel, chemicals, cement, refineries, and waste incinerators. It will offer a decarbonisation solution for industrial sectors by transporting CO₂ to depleted offshore gas fields under the Dutch North Sea. It will be based on an ‘open access’ philosophy to give industrial customers and offshore storage providers the possibility to connect to the infrastructure later.

The concept includes an onshore CO₂ collection hub at the Maasvlakte in the Port of Rotterdam, to which emissions from potential customers can be transported by small tankers or onshore pipelines. The onshore CO₂ collection hub will consist of a compressor station and a shipping terminal with temporary storage facilities for the liquid CO₂ arriving by ship. An offshore pipeline will transport the CO₂ from the collection hub to the offshore platforms for injection into depleted offshore gas fields 3-4 km below the seabed.

The project also aims to create synergies with Porthos and Athos – the other two of Alexandre Dumas' three musketeers – which are existing offshore CCS projects in the Netherlands targeting local industrial clusters. In this way, the Aramis project would be able to realise infrastructure that can serve more industrial clusters to support their transition towards sustainable production processes.

TotalEnergies said CCS was "essential for decarbonising industries and achieving carbon neutrality in Europe. Developing large-scale CCUS solutions for hard-to-abate industrial emissions in Europe is fully aligned with our Climate Ambition to get to net zero emissions by 2050 together with society. This is a collective effort in which Aramis’ four leading partners are pooling their expertise and ambitions to meet emitters’ needs.”

Shell said the public-private partnership – EBN is the state gas producer and Gasunie is also state-owned – aims to "provide customers an opportunity to decarbonise at scale, which is crucial for hard-to-abate sectors to meet climate change targets,” In addition, "CCS is a relatively low-cost solution to reduce CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere at scale.”

EBN said the Aramis CCS project marked a "new necessary phase in the development of an offshore CCS-infrastructure in the Netherlands that also looks for synergies with the offshore CCS projects Porthos and Athos" and that "EBN has a responsibility to contribute to the government’s CO₂ reduction ambitions that include developing CCS-projects with public involvement."

Gasunie said that Aramis would enable the "connection of various CCS initiatives and contribute to an energy transition at the lowest possible social cost.”