Belgium and Denmark have concluded one of the first cross-border agreements on the export of CO2, which could support the shipping business for the emerging liquefied carbon capture and storage (CCS) business.

It will allow captured CO2 to be shipped across their borders to be stored in a sandstone reservoir 1,800 metres beneath the seabed of the Danish North Sea.

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The agreement allows the Ineos-led Project Greensand to move forward.

Under this, CO2 captured from Ineos’ plant in Belgium would be shipped via Antwerp to the company’s Nini West oil platform 200 km off the west coast of Denmark, where it would be injected as a liquid, into the former oilfield.

Danish Shipping flagged up the new cross-border deal with Belgium and the region of Flanders on Monday and said: “The possibility of importing CO2 from abroad to store it safely in the depleted oil and gas fields has taken a big leap forward.”

It said it could benefit companies such as Evergas-Navigator Gas joint venture Dan-Unity CO2, which has been eyeing up the international market for liquefied CO2 exports.

Danish Shipping deputy director general and deputy chief executive Jacob Clasen said: “It is important that we do not rest on our laurels but take this agreement as a stepping stone towards more bilateral agreements with our European partners. Or even better, that we create a European internal market for maritime transport of CO2.”

Danish Shipping said the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland estimates that the total underground storage potential is between 12 and 22 billion tonnes of CO2, which is between 400 and 700 times more than Denmark’s total of CO2 emissions at the current level.

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Cross-border agreements on CO2 are significant to the development of the CCS industry. Currently, under European Union regulations, CO2 is classed as a waste product and cannot be exported to other countries.

Today’s Danish-Belgian and Flanders deal follows the signing in August of what was billed as the world’s first commercial agreement on cross-border CO2 transportation and storage inked between CCS joint venture Northern Lights and Dutch ammonia and fertiliser producer Yara Sluiskil.

This will see 800,000 tonnes of liquefied CO2 shipped from the Netherlands for storage 2,600 metres under the seabed on the Norwegian continental shelf from 2025.

Northern Lights partners Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies hailed this as a “major milestone” for CCS.