Offshore giants combine to form ‘CO2 highway’

The ‘CO₂ highway’ pipeline will begin at Zeebrugge, Belgium and Dunkirk, France and ’will at varying lengths cross and touch Belgian, French, Dutch, German, Danish and Norwegian economic zones and jurisdictions, a total of six nations’, says Fugro, which has been tasked with ground investigations for the pipeline.

“Bringing large-scale CO₂ storage to European industry, this project could be a game-changer for CO₂ transport and storage in northwestern Europe,” says Fugro.

The entire length of the pipeline will be about 1,050km with about 505km in the Norwegian part of the North Sea, the developers say.

“The transport system is planned with a transport capacity of in the range of 18-27 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, with a planned start of operation in 2030. Separate impact assessments will be prepared for each country covered by the pipeline,” Fugro says.

Fugro will deploy WaveWalker, its jack-up platform, to do the ground investigations, enabling the work to be done in a range of weather conditions. Fugro has also carried out a search for unexploded ordnance before geotechnical borehold drilling, downhole core penetration tests and other ground investigations are done, Fugro says.

“The ground investigation will provide Equinor with insights for the development of the landfall, and for deep pipeline burial under the Scheur ship channel, which are vital to ensure safe and efficient installation of the CO₂ pipeline,” the company says.

The carbon dioxide to be stored will come from industrial hubs in Europe, mainly Zeebrugge and Dunkirk, from 2030.

Equinor, which has just announced the discovery of a new oil and gas field 17km west of the Troll field in the North Sea, operates several offshore wind farms that power around 1 million households in Germany and the UK, it says.

In August it opened the Hywind Tampen floating wind farm, the largest floating wind farm in the world, to power Norwegian homes.

Once completed, its wind farm at Dogger Bank off the east of England, will power six million households.