Equinor and Wintershall will build CO2 pipes from Germany to Norway
Equinor and Wintershall Dea announce on Tuesday morning that they have entered into an agreement to develop a carbon capture and storage collaboration that will link Germany to Norway.
The goal is to build a 900 kilometer long pipe that will transport CO2 from the continent to the Norwegian continental shelf for storage.
The news comes the day after Equinor’s carbon storage venture in Norway, Northern Lights, presented an agreement for the transport of CO2 from Yara’s ammonia plant in the Netherlands to Norway for storage under the seabed.
On Monday, Anders Opedal said that the goal was to significantly capture the capacity for storing CO2 in Norway.
Equinor and Wintershall want to have a collection center for CO2 in place in Germany and the pipe to Norway ready by 2032. The pipe is expected to have a capacity of 20–40 million tonnes a year – considerably more than the capacity of 1.5 million tonnes that applies to first phase of the Northern Lights. That number corresponds to 20 percent of industrial emissions in Germany each year, the companies write in the press release.
The project will also consider a preliminary solution where CO2 is planned to be transported by ship from the export center for CO2 to the storage facilities.
– This is a solid energy collaboration that supports the European industrial clusters’ need to decarbonise their businesses. Wintershall Dea and Equinor want to contribute to the energy position, and will use expertise and experience from both companies to work with authorities and partners to reach the goal of net zero, says Equinor’s CEO, Anders Opedal.
Wintershall manager Mario Mehren works in the companies with the authorities to establish a framework as possible.
– We want to build on our close cooperation and start a new chapter in the German-Norwegian partnership, says Mehren.
Wintershall Dea and Equinor plan to submit joint applications for a license to store CO2 at sea, with the aim of storing between 15 and 20 million tonnes a year on the Norwegian shelf.
Building on the Northern Lights
The Northern Lights are part of the Norwegian state’s CO2 capture and storage project, called Langskip. It is run by the oil companies Equinor, Shell and Totalenergies, but 80 percent of the funding comes from the Norwegian government.
Currently, it is only to capture plants that will deliver CO2: Norcem’s cement factory in Brevik and the waste plant at Klemetsrud outside Oslo. But in recent years, a number of letters of intent have been signed with large European industrial players, in addition to several Nordic ones – even if the course of these plans has not been specified.
Catching and storage is scheduled to start in 2024.
Norway’s entire investment is called Langskip, and after it became clear that Oslo municipality will also contribute to the Klemetsrud plant, it is likely that the state will take approximately NOK 17 billion out of a total investment of NOK 25 billion.
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