Ineos Energy, Wintershall Dea and 29 companies, research institutes and universities have signed an agreement to support the second phase of Europe’s first full chain climate carbon capture and storage pilot project.
Ineos Energy, Wintershall Dea and 29 companies, research institutes and universities have signed an agreement to support the second phase of Europe’s first full chain climate carbon capture and storage pilot project.
The Greensand consortium is preparing a grant application with the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme in Denmark. If successful, the consortium is planning to start work by late 2021 with the offshore injection pilot taking place in late 2022.
Mads Weng Gade, head of country, Denmark and commercial director Ineos Energy said: ‘Greensand has brought together a strong consortium of 29 companies, with strong competencies across key players from Denmark and around the world. If we are successful in receiving ongoing support from the Danish government and advisory board, Greensand will be able to take another important step forward in supporting the Danish Climate Strategy.’
A large majority of the Danish Parliament decided in December 2020 to set aside a special funding pool to support a Danish CO2 storage pilot project, aiming to investigate the reservoir-CO2 interaction in the Danish North Sea. The pilot project could form the basis for a decision to enable CO2 storage by 2025.
The objective of the Greensand project is to safely and permanently store up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 per annum in the Ineos-operated Siri area.
The Completed Appraisal phase was performed by field owners Ineos and Wintershall Dea, plus consortium members Maersk Drilling and the Danish government-backed GEUS.
The project recently cleared a big hurdle after DNV GL independently certified that the Nini West field is conceptually suitable for injecting 0.45 million tonnes of CO2 per year per well for a 10-year period, and that the subsea reservoir can safely contain the CO2.
Pilot phase (proof of concept) planning is getting underway with a potential start around Q4 2021. The FID for the full-scale project is planned for the second half of 2023. Carbon storage could be operational from around 2025.
The Paleocene sandstone fields of the Siri Area in the Danish North Sea are located at an optimal depth of 1.5-2.2 km and are encased in one of the most competent cap rocks in the North Sea, said Ineos. The area is geologically extremely stable and has retained gas and oil for 10-20 million years, it added.
In Phase 1, the storage potential is ½-1 million tonnes of CO2 per year from 2025, increasing to 4-8 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030. Hence, the Greensand Area could account for all of the CO2 storage proposed in the Danish Climate Programme.
Denmark has set out a goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 70% from 1990 to 2030. Establishing CO2 storage by 2025 can only be done by using depleted hydrocarbon fields in the Danish North Sea, and such solutions are estimated to deliver 25-40% of the Danish reduction target by 2030.
