Wintershall Dea signs on to UK's Poseidon CCS project
German natural gas producer Wintershall Dea has joined a second carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the UK and the country's largest in the works, the company announced on November 14.
In a statement, Wintershall said it had acquired a 10% stake in the project licence from UK CCS tech firm Carbon Catalyst. The project operator is Anglo-French firm Perenco.
With a targeted launch of 2029, Poseidon will have an annual storage capacity of up to 40mn tonnes, equivalent to four-fifths of the UK's national target for 2035. It is expected to receive CO2 from emitters across the east and southeast of England, transported via the Perenco-operated Bacton gas terminal to the offshore storage site in the south North Sea.
Poseidon is projected to store over 1bn t of CO2 in total over its lifetime, in depleted reservoirs at the Leman gas field as well as saline aquifers.
Wintershall now takes in five offshore CCS licences in three countries in the North Sea – a region pitched to become Europe's largest base for CO2 sequestration. It is also involved in the BlueHyNow blue hydrogen project and the CO2nnectNow CO2 hub in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. It is also working with Equinor to develop the NOR-GE pipeline to deliver CO2 from European industrial clusters to North Sea storage sites.
It is also a lead member in the Greensand consortium developing a CCS project in Denmark.
The company said it could "contribute valuable subsurface and technical knowledge" to Poseidon, leveraging its 60 years of upstream experience in the North Sea and its growing CCS expertise.
"We are looking forward to working together with our partners Perenco and Carbon Catalyst in order to mature this project in a safe and most efficient way," the company said.