Equinor announced that it has won the operatorships to develop the CO2 storages Smeaheia in the North Sea and Polaris in the Barents Sea.

The company elaborated that this announcement was made by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.

“CO2 transport and storage infrastructure (CCS) is crucial for providing CO2 solutions on a commercial basis to industrial customers, such as steel, cement and other heavy industries,” Equinor said in a statement.

“We are now building on more than 25 years of experience from CO2 capture and storage on the Norwegian continental shelf and we regard the award as an important milestone in the work to make the Norwegian continental shelf a leading province in Europe for CO2 storage. We see that demand for CO2 storage is increasing in several countries, and we want to get started with developing new CO2 storages quickly, so that we can offer industrial solutions that can contribute to decarbonization in Europe,” says Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for Marketing, Midstream and Processing (MMP).

The CO2 storage capacity which will be established in Smeaheia is planned to reach 20 million tonnes annually, which would optimize the capacity to store CO2 on a commercial basis on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Moreover, the injection capacity of the Northern Lights CO2 storage facility in the Longship project has been planned to be 1.5 million tonnes a year in Phase 1 available from 2024, with ambitions to scale up annual capacity to 5-6 million tonnes from around 2026.

With these two projects, Equinor will be able to cut back on carbon emissions equivalent to half of Norway’s annual emissions.

“We are pleased that Norwegian authorities have made storage areas available with basis in commercial industries. Rapid scale-up of CO2 storage at Smeaheia is essential to meet the interest and need for this type of service and to ensure storage needs from low-carbon projects in Norway,” says Rummelhoff.