Ranking and Risking Alternative CO2 Storage Sites Offshore Norway

As a part of the Norwegian Government plan to develop a new full-scale CCS project, several industrial players were engaged to conduct feasibility studies on CO2 capture, transport and storage during 2016. This paper summarizes the storage site evaluation study. The overall concept is to capture CO2 from several industrial sources in the Oslo area and transport via ship to offshore storage on the Norwegian continental shelf. The design capacity requirement was to handle 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year over a period of 25 years. Three storage site were investigated: the Heimdal gas field, and two new sites named Smeaheia and Utsira South. All three sites were found to be technically feasible from a geological and reservoir engineering perspective. However, the Utsira site had insufficient capacity due to well-leakage risk and limited available area for storage licencing. Use of the depleted Heimdal gas field was found to be technically feasible but less attractive due to costs and operational issues at the site. In contrast, the Smeaheia site offered both operational and geological flexibility leading to its eventual selection for further maturation as a new offshore CO2 storage site in Norway.