Vital carbon storage capacity below the North Sea, critical to the pioneering move to clean up South Humber Bank industry in the journey to Net Zero, has been verified.
Harbour Energy has announced that its understanding of there being 300 million tonnes of accessible resource for the Viking CCS project has been independently assessed. The team behind it said it “underscores the vital role it can play in enabling the UK Government to reach its target to capture up to 30 million tonnes a year of CO2 by 2030”.
The oil and gas specialist was granted the CO2 appraisal and storage licence for the depleted Viking area in 2021, having bought the assets - which included the Grainthorpe terminal - from ConocoPhillips.
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Last year, ERCE, a consultancy specialising in geoscience evaluation, engineering, and economic assessments, was tasked with completing an independent audit of the storage capacity. Using the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Storage Resource Management System, it has declared Harbour’s 300 million tonnes estimate to be “fair and reasonable”.
Executive vice president Steve Cox said: “During 2022, we had our contingent CO2 storage resources of 300 million tonnes independently evaluated by ERCE via a competent person’s report - the first project in the UK and we believe only the third in the world to have done so. This confirms Viking ’s leading position in the UK’s CCS industry.”
Attention now turns to the support framework and policy emerging from Westminster to support a sector in which the project aims to deliver a reduction of 10 million tonnes of UK emissions per annum by 2030 and up to 15 million tonnes by 2035.
“We look forward to the UK Government announcing its plans to progress Track Two of its cluster sequencing process, as a critical next step in the development of the UK CCS industry,” Mr Cox said. “Securing government support through this process in the coming months will be important if the Viking project is to remain on its current development schedule and be ready for start-up in 2027.”
Viking not only focuses on handling emissions from the refining and power cluster around Immingham, but is also working with ABP to look at carbon imports through the port from areas without access to CCS, and has reached out to Nottinghamshire power producers in recent months. Late last year Harbour Energy entered into a partnership with RWE to explore a further carbon capture power station plan for the South Bank.
It is one of two major projects being brought forward, with another, Zero Carbon Humber, linking up with Teesside as part of the East Coast Cluster, in a dual pipeline strategy for the region twinned with hydrogen production.
New onshore pipelines for the Viking project are set to enter the planning process in the coming months, having been through statutory consultations. They would replace existing infrastructure that served the Humber Bank with gas.
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