Norske Shell (ticker: RDSA), Statoil (ticker: ASA), and Total E&P Norge (ticker: TOT) have signed a partnership agreement to mature the development of carbon storage on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The CO2 project has a capacity of approximately 1.5 million tons per year for the first phase. The project is designed to accommodate additional CO2 volumes to stimulate new commercial carbon capture projects in Europe and around the globe.
Stored CO2 will be captured from Eastern Norway. The CO2 will then be shipped to receiving terminals on the west coast of Norway. The CO2 will then be transferred form the ship to storage tanks, before being sent through a seabed pipeline to injection wells east of Troll Field. The location of the receiving terminal is still being decided upon.
The project has the goal of stimulating carbon capture and storage (CCS) to achieve long term climate targets.
After other projects have economically or technically failed, the three companies invested in the project seek to develop a viable, reproducible CCS model that can be replicated in other parts of the world.
Southern Company recently announced it would suspend the carbon capture portion of the $7.5 billion power plant in Kemper, Mississippi. Due to the project being three years behind schedule and $4 billion over budget, Southern Company decided to burn natural gas instead of coal to create electricity at the location. It will not capture the plant’s CO2 emissions.
The Kemper project failed because the technology used to capture the carbon emissions could not be scaled to work economically before the project ran out of money and support.
Will CCS projects be economically viable at all?
With three global oil and gas giants investing in storage of carbon, Statoil, Shell and Total believe that the technology will provide long term value while also aiming to reduce the carbon footprint from oil and gas operations.
Source: Shell
