Harbour Energy announced yesterday that they have been awarded a CO2 storage license by the British Oil and Gas Authority (OGA).The area subject to the license is located in the southern section of the North Sea, close to Immingham, Northern Lincolnshire.
Phil Kirk, chairman and CEO of Harbour Energy Europe, commented “The OGA’s decision to grant Harbour Energy a carbon storage license is great news for the Humber and for the V Net Zero Humber Cluster. It is an essential milestone which comes at an exciting time for the project as we seek to remove more than 50% of existing industrial emissions in the Humber region.”
Relevant: Teesside Carbon Capture Cluster Brought To Consultation
Harbour’s proposal is to use the now depleted Rotliegend gas fields -called Viking and Victor – to store carbon dioxide in geological formations around 2,743m (~9,000 ft) under the seafloor and around 140km offshore (87mi).
Conoco Philips was the developer of these fields in the 1970s-80s, with Chrysaor Energy operating them from the previous decade. (Chrysaor merged with Premier Oil to form Harbour Energy earlier this year).
The whole project happens under the umbrella of Harbour’s V Net Zero development, which plans to transport CO2 along a newly-constructed pipeline from Immingham to Theddlethorpe to the south, and re-use the 120-km (75-mi) offshore LOGGS pipeline to transport the CO2 to the Viking fields.
Initial injections of the CO2 could start in Q4 2026 at rates starting initially at 3.6 MM metric tons/yr (3.97 MM tons) and to 11 MMM metric tons/yr (12.1 MM tons) by 2030. This would eclipse the UK government’s 10 Point Plan of achieving CCUS (carbon capture, usage and storage) of 10 MMt/yr by 2030.
Read more: UK Moves Ahead With Carbon Capture Policy
