Norway’s Altera Infrastructure has made a breakthrough in carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The shuttle tanker owner and German oil company partner Wintershall Dea have won a licence from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum & Energy to develop the Havstjerne CO2 storage site in the North Sea.
Havsterjne, 100 km southwest of Egersund, will have an annual capacity estimated at 7 million tonnes per annum. It will be the first large-scale commercial CCS project in Europe.
Altera has developed a CCS shipping concept called Stella Maris for the project.
A spokesman told TradeWinds: “To realise this, we will have to build new CO2 shuttle tankers, as well as CO2 terminals and a floating injection unit.
“In this first phase, we look to build three tankers, one floating injection unit and one to two terminals which will be placed across Europe. If all goes according to plan, we should be moving CO2 from late 2026/early 2027.”
The company said the new ships will have a capacity of 50,000 cbm.
The partners are already in “advanced” discussions with CO2 emitters and ports in the Baltics, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
Altera chief executive Ingvild Saether said: “CCS as a decarbonisation strategy is expected to expand and grow significantly in Europe in the coming years, so this is only the beginning.
“The world needs CCS on a massive scale, and we are proud to be part of the solution.”
Johanne Koll-Hansen Bo, Altera’s head of CCS, said: “We have been working on our maritime CCS concept Stella Maris for many years, and with the storage licence now in place, we are ready to develop and realise a large-scale integrated CO2 infrastructure solution to customers across Europe.”
The company will collect and transport the gas, then inject it into the permanent storage location.
Altera, which has a fleet of 37 ships, applied for the licence in January.
To reach the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the global temperature rise below 2%, Altera said 1,000 CCS projects of 10 mtpa each will be needed.
