Marine seismic survey firm Shearwater GeoServices has won a contract in the UK related to a carbon capture and storage project.
The project, awarded by BP on behalf of the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), is for geophysical data processing and imaging to advance the East Coast Cluster. The East Coast Cluster has recently been named as one of the UK’s first CCS projects and aims to remove nearly 50% of all UK industrial cluster CO2 emissions.
The NEP enables the East Coast Cluster by providing the common infrastructure needed to transport CO2 from emitters in the Humber and Teesside. The CO2 will then be securely sequestered in the Endurance carbon store offshore in the North Sea. NEP is a partnership between BP, National Grid Ventures, Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
The seismic data processing and imaging activity will be executed by geophysical experts at Shearwater’s UK Processing & Imaging center over a period of approximately eight months. Multisensor geophysical data will be passed through advanced algorithms, tests, and analyses to provide a dataset which will enable NEP to characterize subsurface structures with potential for carbon storage. Geophysical surveys are used in carbon storage projects to survey and monitor the subsurface geology ensuring secure storage over time.
Irene Waage Basilli, CEO of Shearwater, said: "Shearwater is taking a leading role in supporting our clients to advance their carbon storage projects. We have the geophysical expertise, technologies and platforms to help our clients achieve their net-zero and low carbon goals through developing carbon storage at scale, and we are pleased to support BP, and their partners, with this ground-breaking project.”
Andy Lane, Managing Director of the Northern Endurance Partnership, said:"The Southern North Sea has some of the most ideal carbon storage sites anywhere in the world, and the East Coast Cluster has the capacity to store up to 1 billion tonnes of CO2. We are aiming for first injection from 2026, and by 2038 will be capturing and storing up to 23 million tonnes of CO2 per year from a wide range of industrial and power projects on Teesside and the Humber. We look forward to working with Shearwater on this first-of-a-kind carbon storage project that will create thousands of jobs and help establish the Teesside and Humber regions as a globally-competitive climate-friendly hub for industry and innovation”.
The East Coast Cluster was named as one of the UK’s first CCUS clusters following a successful bid in Phase-1 of the UK Government’s CCUS cluster sequencing process in October 2021.
In March 2022, 25 projects within the East Coast Cluster were shortlisted for evaluation within Phase-2 of the cluster sequencing process. The projects, covering power, industrial carbon capture (ICC), and hydrogen, were adjudged to have met the eligibility criteria. The projects will now be evaluated, with an update on successful bids expected from July 2022.