Shell, Total Join Statoil CCS Project

Statoil, Shell and Total signed a partnership agreement October 2 to advance development of carbon storage offshore Norway, in line with Norwegian authorities’ efforts to develop full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS).

In June, Norwegian state Gassnova awarded Statoil the contract for the first phase of the project to store carbon dioxide (CO₂) captured from onshore industrial facilities in eastern Norway. Shell and Total are now entering this project as equal partners, which Statoil will continue to lead.  

The first phase of this CO₂ project could reach a capacity of some 1.5 million metric tons/yr. It will be designed to accommodate additional CO₂ volumes aiming to stimulate new commercial carbon capture projects in Norway, Europe and worldwide. Norway is already looking at shipment of CO₂ by tanker.

Partners said the project thus has the potential to be the first storage project site in the world receiving CO₂ from industrial sources in several countries.

“Statoil believes that without CCS, it is not realistic to meet the global climate target as defined in the Paris Agreement. A massive scale up of number of CCS projects are needed and collaboration and sharing of knowledge are essential to accelerating the development,” said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions.  

All three majors have spoken of a need to develop CCS, while Shell has a fully operating 'Quest' CCS plant in Alberta, western Canada that sequestered over 1mn mt of CO2 from high-carbon oil sands production in 2016, while Statoil has operated CCS at its Sleipner gasfield and Snohvit LNG in Norway and also at In Salah field onshore Algeria for around a decade.

CO₂ captured from onshore industrial facilities in eastern Norway will be transported, under the project, by ship from the capture facilities to a coastal receiving terminal onshore western Norway, whence it will be transferred to intermediate storage tanks, prior to being sent by pipe to the seabed to injection wells east of the Troll field on the NCS.

There are three possible locations for the receiving terminal; a final selection will be made later this year by Gassnova and commercial partners.

Norwegian upstream regulator NPD said last week it will host a seminar November 1 to release new international standards for CCS.

Mark Smedley