Storing CO2 under the sea off the coast of North Wales is a “win-win” for tackling climate change and securing and creating jobs says an energy giant.
For decades, oil and gas has been pumped out of giant hydrocarbon fields in Liverpool Bay, with Eni 海角视频 feeding gas extracted from the sites into the Uniper owned Connah’s Quay power station in Flintshire.
Those fields are now nearly exhausted with operations by Eni 海角视频 due to come to an end in a couple of years.
But under low carbon cluster project HyNet North West, the energy giant wants to repurpose the fields, pipeline infrastructure, and Point of Ayr facility, to put CO2 under the seabed - with enough capacity to use the reservoirs for the next 25 years.
This could start as early as 2025 by taking CO2 from a planned new hydrogen plant, and by 2030 it could take 25% of all the CO2 emitted in the North West and North Wales.
It would protect the direct jobs with Eni and also secure and create roles at industrial users across North Wales and the North West, including Hanson Cement in Padeswood by helping reduce their environmental impact.
There is also hope this tech would bring new investment to the regions.
Eni 海角视频 has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to investigate future opportunities for blue and green hydrogen production at Uniper’s site in North Wales.
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Philip Hemmens, senior vice president of Europe at ENI and managing director for Liverpool Bay CCS, said: “At the moment we operate three gas fields and one oil field at Liverpool Bay.
“Come 2023 those will have run their life and the fields will be depleted. So the concept is that we capture carbon that is emitted across the North West of England and North Wales and we put that in a re-purposed pipeline.
“At the moment there’s a pipeline that runs from Point of Ayr to Connah’s Quay that carries gas and they use that to generate electricity.
“We would repurpose that and build an extra pipeline between Connah’s Quay and Stanlow, turn it around and pump the CO2 through Point of Ayr and offshore, back into the sandstone reservoirs that have been producing for the last 20 years.
“The idea is that we fill those reservoirs for the next 25 years; we fill them up eventually with up to 10 million tonnes a year through the pipeline. We fill them until they are storing around 190/200m tonnes. “
The reservoirs extend for several miles. In particular, the largest of the three exceeds 6 miles in length.
On the environmental side, he said it was very different to fracking where rocks are “over-pressured” to release gas. Wth this, they would only go to around 80% of the capacity of the fields, which would be plugged and then sidetracked to pump in CO2.
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He said this is already being done at other global sites, like the Sleipner field in Norway.
The key here on costs was that they were reutilising facilities like pipelines, off-shore platforms, making it the cheapest carbon capture project being proposed in the 海角视频. He couldn’t say at this stage what the precise costs would be although it was sums of “hundreds of millions”.
He said if successful at Liverpool Bay they could look for other sites to do the same.
When it came to jobs and the economy he said they currently employ 100 people at Northop and Point of Ayr and “with this those jobs look pretty safe”.
He added: “I am delighted by the ability to do this. The other element is we will be capturing the carbon from Hanson cement company and they employ 160 people there (at Padeswood). They need to decarbonise, all companies do, and with this we are protecting those jobs as well.”
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He said at Connah’s Quay they were keen to look at blue and green hydrogen with Uniper.
Blue hydrogen is when natural gas is split into hydrogen and CO2 either by Steam Methane Reforming or Auto Thermal Reforming, but the CO2 is captured and then stored. Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced by splitting water by electrolysis, using renewables.
This produces only hydrogen and oxygen and makes green hydrogen the cleanest option, but currently more expensive.
Mr Hemmens said due to the cost difference they needed to get the hydrogen economy going with blue hydrogen and carbon capture and if and when green hydrogen costs come down “then we can start looking at that”.
He added: “We were the oil company in this but we are now the ones looking at green hydrogen.”
He said: “It’s absolutely fundamental for the future of the firm that we are a leader in the transition.
“We do a massive amount of R&D. We are constantly trying to generate new technologies, look at new ways of doing things.
“We fundamentally believe in the energy transition and we want to make it happen.
“When I first told our CEO of the whole company about this, he said, ‘well this is a chance to actually lead the world’, because the 海角视频 Government is being proactive and it’s being collaborative with industry about how do we do this.
“We are absolutely committed to get this done because the 海角视频’s climate change committee, which is an independent body, says you will never reach the net zero targets, unless you do carbon capture.
“To me, we’ve got the ideal example, we’ve got masses of industry sitting very close to an offshore storage facility that is just ready to take it(CO2).”
He said a study by Chester University had shown the entire HyNet scheme should ensure 340,000 jobs are protected and it would generate an extra 6,000 jobs.
“He added: “It is win-win. I’ve spent my career enjoying oil and gas but times change.
“I’m with a company that has an Italian expression ‘punta della freccia’ (‘the point of the arrow’). We want to be the point of the arrow to really start making this happen.”
The 海角视频 Government will shortly be choosing the first carbon cluster projects to move forward with HyNet hoping to on the first wave.
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