Norway offers six companies CO2 acreage in North Sea
Equinor expect 4-8 per cent real base project returns for its early phase CO2 storage business, and further value uplift potential when commercial markets are developed.
On 20 June, the Ministry of Energy announced the award of new CO2 storage licenses.
The authorities have reviewed applications from eight companies following announcement of two suitable acreage in March 2024.
"We see great interest from the companies and find it gratifying that four offers are now being sent out. This is the highest number of offers that have been sent out simultaneously", says Hilde Braut, assistant director for new industries.
The six companies that have received offers are:
- Equinor ASA
- Aker BP ASA
- Lime Petroleum AS
- OMV (Norge) AS
- PGNiG Upstream Norway AS
- Vår Energi ASA
This is the sixth time acreage has been awarded for CO2 storage pursuant to the CO2 Storage Regulations.
"We are very pleased to see the Norwegian authorities have made new CCS storage 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," says Grete Tveit, senior vice president for Low Carbon Solutions in Equinor.
Equinor expect 4-8 per cent real base project returns for its early phase CO2 storage business, and further value uplift potential when commercial markets are developed.
Equinor is 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 tons of CO2 per year from Belgium and France.
The Smeaheia storage license, awarded to Equinor in 2022, is 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 the second half of this year.
"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 tons of CO2 transport and storage capacity per year by 2035," says Tveit.
