Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
The region offers:
- Proximity to the Southern North Sea where there is extensive carbon storage capacity
- A long established supply chain with transferable skills to adapt and assist CCS development
- An existing infrastructure which can be easily adapted to handle CCS
- Leading R&D and innovation facilities for the sector
The Southern North Sea boasts numerous opportunities for CCS with many depleted gas fields and the saline aquifer of the Bunter Sandstone formation easily accessible from the coast of the East of England.
Their scale and availability for CO2 storage, after decommissioning, place the region in a unique position in the UK with the competitive edge to develop excellence in the CCS sector.
Technical expertise (gained from extracting oil and gas) is available to plan the storage and there is an established industry base to do the work.
Almost all of the UK offshore oil and gas fields still have their platforms in place - and they can be modified for CO2 storage, at a fraction of the cost of building and installing new facilities.
The technologies involved in pipeline transportation are little different from those used extensively for transporting gas or oil, in some cases, it may even be possible to re-use existing but redundant pipeline assets.
The development of CO2 pipeline networks and their ongoing management is set to become a major international business opportunity for specialists in this area
