Wintershall Dea is expanding its activities related to the long-term and safe underground storage of CO2 offshore Denmark
It has signed an agreement to mature and pursue the Greenport Scandinavia project with other companies in a consortium that is looking to establish a CO2 hub near Hirtshals on the Danish North Sea coast.
Among other things, the hub will be connected to the value chain of the CCS Project Greensand, in which Wintershall Dea is a key player.
The Danish Government considers carbon capture and storage important to its decarbonisation aims and has allocated Dkr16.0Bn (US$2.4Bn) over the next decade to support the development of a CCUS value chain in the country, including Project Greensand, a project in the North Sea.
Project Greensand has the potential to store roughly 0.5~1M tonnes of CO2 per year from 2025, increasing to between 4M to 8M tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.
The Greenport Scandinavia project is meant to serve as a collection point for CO2 generated during the production of biogas in regional plants which will then be transported by ship to the Project Greensand facility to be permanently and safely stored in a depleted oil reservoir.
The consortium estimates it can sequester approximately 1.5M tonnes of CO2 per year, some of which will come from countries on the Baltic Sea, this way.
Wintershall board member and chief technology officer Hugo Dijkgraaf said, “Wintershall Dea is already an important partner for the CO2 transport infrastructure and underground storage of CO2 in the North Sea.”
“By participating in Greenport Scandinavia, we are showing we are driving decarbonisation forward. We are entering into selected partnerships like this one as well as applying for CCS licences.”
Greenport North chief executive Steen Harding Hintze added, “In Wintershall Dea, we have gained an experienced partner and are confident we will be able to leverage key synergies as a result of this collaboration. CCS is a key component of Denmark’s decarbonisation strategy, so rapidly developing the CO2 hub is of great importance to us.”
Together, Greenport Scandinavia and the Project Greensand will represent two important cornerstones for the transport and storage of CO2 emissions in northern Europe.
Wintershall Dea said the experience gained here will go towards developing the CO2 hub in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, where the company and other partners plan will collaborate on the CO2nnect Now project, which will be a collection point for emissions on the German North Sea coast for offshore storage sites in the North Sea.
