Offshore contractor and dredging firm Jan De Nul has officially entered the carbon capture and storage (CCS) sector, securing a contract to provide subsea rock installation for the Northern Endurance Partnership’s (NEP) offshore CO2 transportation and storage network in the UK North Sea.
Acting as a subcontractor to primary EPC contractor Saipem, Jan De Nul is utilizing its specialized flexible fallpipe vessel, the Simon Stevin, to install a protective layer of rock over the project’s one-meter-diameter seabed trunkline.
The offshore installation campaign, occurring at water depths ranging from 30 to 60 meters, utilizes a vertical fallpipe system to achieve high-precision placement of rock armor over the pipeline route.
The NEP project, a joint venture formed by energy majors BP, Equinor, and TotalEnergies, is engineered to serve as core offshore infrastructure for the UK’s industrial decarbonization strategy along the east coast of England.
Jan De Nul Project Manager Tom Quintelier noted that entering the carbon management market aligns with the contractor’s strategic ambition to leverage its specialized offshore fleet for climate-mitigation and energy-transition infrastructure.
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The subsea pipeline network is designed to collect compressed CO2 emissions from major industrial emitters across the Teesside and Humber regional energy hubs.
During its initial commercial phase, the offshore network will link directly to three foundational decarbonization projects in Teesside: NZT Power, H2Teesside, and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture.
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The collected CO2 will be pumped through the protected pipeline network into a deep saline aquifer storage formation thousands of meters beneath the North Sea bed.
Offshore CO2 injection and permanent geological storage at the site are scheduled to commence in 2028, with the storage complex engineered to isolate up to 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over an initial 25-year operational lifespan.
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