Norwegian shipowner PGS has revealed a conditional award for a data-acquisition contract relating to Equinor’s Smeaheia carbon storage project.
The seismic vessel player will survey the site in the North Sea in August and September.
“We are very pleased with another carbon storage acquisition contract by Equinor,” said PGS chief executive Rune Olav Pedersen.
In January, the owner signed an acquisition deal with Northern Lights, the carbon capture and storage (CCS) joint venture involving Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.
“The Northern Lights contract was awarded to us by Equinor, on behalf of the Northern Lights JV, and the seismic acquisition programme was completed with great success. We really appreciate this repeat business from a very important client,” Pedersen added.
PGS has also signed an acquisition deal with BP on behalf of its Northern Endurance Partnership with Equinor, Shell, TotalEnergies and National Grid Ventures.
In addition, the shipowner is working on CCS with deepC Store in Australia and with France’s CGG on CCS data.
In 2021, PGS sold CCS data worth between $5m and $10m from its library.
The International Energy Agency believes that if the world is to reach net zero, 7.6 gigatonnes per year of CO2 needs to be captured and stored by 2050.
Pedersen said at Nor-Shipping in April that at least 18 survey vessel-years will be needed before 2040, just for storage well monitoring.
The world’s fleet now stands at 16 or 17 seismic units.
