Denmark has awarded its first licences to capture and store carbon in the North Sea to Wintershall Dea and INEOS Energy, and TotalEnergies
The country’s climate and energy ministry said the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) evaluated applications made by TotalEnergies and another application by INEOS and Winstershall, who form part of a different consortium, and recommended that licences be made available.
TotalEnergies’s Danish subsidiary was awarded two licences and the partnership between INEOS Energy and Wintershall Dea International is awarded one licence.
INEOS and Winstershall’s Greensand project is expected to begin injecting nearly a million tonnes of CO2 into depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea by 2025 rising to between 4~8M tonnes per year by 2030.
Beginning in 2027, TotalEnergies’ Bifrost project aims to inject up to 3M tonnes of CO2 into a depleted oil and gas field.
TotalEnergies will work with state-owned Nordsøfonden, which holds a 20% interest, carrying out evaluation and appraisal work to develop the project and hopes to ultimately transport and permanently store more than 5M tonnes of CO2 a year by repurposing existing infrastructure in the Danish North Sea and building new facilities.
“Granting the first exclusive permits for full-scale CO2 storage in the North Sea is an important step into the future. CO2 capture and storage is an important element in the green transition. Today’s licences are the result of effective implementation of the first Danish political agreements on CCS,” said DEA director Kristoffer Böttzauw.
DEA added that the licences pave the way forward for Denmark as an important player in realising the growing demand for CO2 storage capacity in northern Europe.
The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) has previously demonstrated the Danish subsurface is particularly suitable for both offshore and onshore CO2 storage.
GEUS estimates the Danish subsurface can theoretically can store up to 22Bn tonnes of CO2, equivalent to between 500 and 1,000 years of total Danish emissions at current levels.
The licences cover areas in depleted oil and gas fields and previously unexplored saline aquifers. All the licences contain the necessary geological structures that are suited to serve as permanent storage locations in the future. The timing and design of the final CO2 storage facilities will depend on the upcoming exploration and research work.
The specific storage projects must be approved by the DEA before establishment. Captured CO2 will likely be transported either via specially designed ships or through existing or new pipeline infrastructure.
Finally, the CO2 will be stored in depleted oil and gas fields or saline aquifers 1-2 km below the seabed, by pumping the CO2 into small pockets in sandstone or limestone layers and thus being buried under thick layers of impermeable claystone.
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