Equinor eyes North Sea expansion
Published by Oliver Kleinschmidt,
Assistant Editor
Tanks and Terminals,
On 20 June, the Ministry of Energy announced the award of new CO2 storage licenses. Equinor was awarded operatorships and a 100% share for the two licenses referred to as Albondigas and Kinno.
The new licenses are each expected to have the capacity to store around 5 million tpy of CO2 when in operation. This estimate will be further determined in the exploration phase.
"We are very pleased to see the Norwegian authorities have made new CCS acreage available for exploration and that we have been awarded these two licenses. We see that demand for CO2 storage is increasing in several countries, and it is crucial to bring forward new CO2 storages quickly, so that we can offer industrial solutions that can support large scale decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries in Europe," said Grete Tveit, senior vice president for Low Carbon Solutions in Equinor.
Equinor expect 4% - 8% real base project returns for its early phase CO2 storage business, and further value uplift potential when commercial markets are developed.
The award of the Albondigas and Kinno licenses has added to Equinor’s ambitions to develop more storage licenses in the North Sea in the coming years.
Equinor has been maturing a ship-based solution as well as a large pipeline to connect industrial emissions in Europe with storage opportunities at the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The planned pipeline named CO2 Highway Europe will have capacity to transport 25 - 35 million tpy of CO2 from Belgium and France.
The Smeaheia storage license, awarded to Equinor in 2022, was the anchor storage for this pipeline development and Albondigas and Kinno will be additional storage opportunities that can be connected.
Equinor is also about to complete the first phase of the Northern Lights CO2 transport and storage facility together with Shell and Total Energies. It will be ready to receive CO2 by 2H24.
"Scale-up of CO2 transport and storage is essential to meet the interest and demand for this type of services. Gaining access to more CO2 storage capacity aligns well with our ambition of having 30 to 50 million tpy of CO2 transport and storage capacity by 2035," said Tveit.
Read the article online at: https://www.tanksterminals.com/storage-tanks/21062024/equinor-eyes-north-sea-expansion/
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