UK government greenlights CCS project in North Sea

On completion of the North Sea Transition Authority’s first competitive Carbon Storage licence round, Perenco UK and partner Carbon Catalyst Ltd have been awarded a licence to progress the Poseidon CCS project encompassing the Leman gas fields. 

Leman is one of the largest geological structures in the southern North Sea sector of the UK Continental Shelf and offers a mixture of depleted gas reservoirs and saline aquifers in which to permanently store recovered carbon dioxide.

Poseidon is set to begin operation by 2029, initially injecting 1.5M tonnes of CO2 per year (mta) into the Leman field. 

Leman is connected via pipeline to the PUK Bacton Terminal, which will receive and process CO2 from various onshore sources and send it offshore to inject into reservoir rocks for permanent geological storage.

That tally is set to increase to more than 40 mta over the course of the project’s 40-year lifecycle. 

Perenco called the award of CCS licences an “exciting milestone, formalising the start of a new strategic division within the Perenco Group.” 

The company revealed the project will immediately progress into a further detailed appraisal of the storage sites and commence work with Perenco’s mid-stream and up-stream partners.

Perenco UK general manager Jo White said, “This is a fantastic opportunity to leverage Perenco UK’s deep experience of gas operations by developing a project that will help to support the UK’s energy transition, generate highly skilled jobs locally and nationally, and actively facilitate the government’s NetZero targets. We look forward to working with all stakeholders to deliver this strategic project.”