European oil companies plan major carbon capture project in Norway

Three European oil companies will assemble a major carbon storage project in Norway, part of an effort to mitigate rising temperatures.

Norway’s Statoil, France’s Total and Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell have struck a deal to develop equipment and facilities that will store carbon dioxide emanating from industrial sites in Norway.

“Without carbon capture and storage, it is not realistic to meet the global climate target as defined in the Paris Agreement,” said Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for new energy solutions at Statoil, in a statement. “A massive scale up of number of CCS projects are needed.”

The companies aim to capture 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year in the project’s first phase, but they plan to design the project to expand the storage capacity, a bid to spur investments in future carbon capture storage projects. That could make it the world’s first international commercial storage project collecting carbon dioxide from industrial sites.

The companies said they’ll transport the carbon dioxide, which is collected in so-called capture facilities at Norwegian industrial sites, by ship to a terminal on the country’s west coast, before the carbon dioxide is transferred to storage tanks and then piped into injection wells on the seabed.

[“Source-chron”]