News about CCUS hubs around the world
September 15, 2023
The North Sea Transition Authority has awarded 21 licences to 14 companies to store up to 30 million tonnes of CO2 per year in depleted oil and gas reservoirs and saline aquifers by 2030 – around 10% of current UK annual emissions.
Separately, the Scottish Government Just Transition Funding partnered with ETZ and Shell to build an Energy Transition Skills Hub that aims to train 1,000 people for jobs in areas from CCUS, to wind turbine construction and electrification over its first five years.
August 11, 2023
The US Department of Energy announced the locations of the first two commercial-scale direct air capture (DAC hubs) that it intends to support, as part of a $3.5 billion programme. Its aim is to kickstart a nationwide network of large-scale carbon removal sites with shared CO2 transport and storage infrastructure.
One of the two hubs will be developed by 1PointFive, a subsidiary of OGCI member company Occidental, using Carbon Engineering technology. Storage will be in a saline aquifer that has the potential to store up to 3 billion tonnes of CO2. The current plan is to store up to 30 MT of CO2 per year through DAC and provide transport and storage options to nearby industrial emitters on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Two other OGCI members, Shell and Chevron, are participating in projects that were among the 19 selected to start negotiations on support for feasibility and FEED studies.
July 31, 2023
The UK government has selected two relatively mature CCUS hubs, Acorn CCS in Scotland and Viking T&S in the Humber region, to participate in Track 2 of its cluster sequencing programme. This status enables the hub operators to engage with government over delivery and funding plans.
May 9, 2023
Osaka Gas and Shell Singapore are conducting a joint feasibility study on a project to develop a CCS value chain collecting carbon dioxide emissions from industrial facilities in Japan and storing it underground.
The scope includes the aggregation and liquefaction of carbon dioxide captured from steel, cement, chemical and other plants in hard-to-abate industries, transportation of the liquefied carbon dioxide via ship to storage facilities in the Asia-Pacific region, and injection and storage in underground facilities.
March 2, 2023
1PointFive announced it has leased more than 55,000 acres along the Texas Gulf Coast to develop a CCUS hub with the capacity to hold approximately 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The Bluebonnet Hub is located near refineries, chemical plants and manufacturing facilities along the Gulf Coast between Beaumont and Houston. The hub, which is expected to be operational in 2026, will provide for CO2 captured off-site to be securely stored in saline formations that are not associated with oil and gas production.
1PointFive has completed drilling a test well and subsurface assessment to characterize the site’s ability to securely store CO2 and expects to apply for two Class VI permits in 2023.
February 6, 2023
Denmark has awarded its first three permits for full-scale CO2 storage in the North Sea. Two go to TotalEnergies for a deleted gas reservoir and a saline aquifer; the other to a consortium of INEOS and Wintershall Dea. This marks the next step in Denmark’s sprint to achieve in just a few years what other North Sea storage operators have taken over a decade to do. CCUS was made legal in Denmark in 2020. Since then, a series of public-private partnerships have worked on pilot hub projects, regulations, incentives, seismic studies and impact assessments. The plan is to make the first large-scale injections in 2025.
February 3, 2023
bp and Japanese utility Chubu announced they were exploring the feasibility of a Nagoya CCUS hub. This would aggregate captured CO2 from across the port of Nagoya in central Japan and ship it to storage sites, potentially internationally.
The port is home to steel, automotive, aircraft and other manufacturing companies and accounts for 3% of Japan’s carbon dioxide emissions.
November 10, 2022
In partnership with the Ministry of Energy, Aramco has signed a Joint Development Agreement with Linde and SLB to establish a CCS hub in Jubail Industrial City on the east coast of Saudi Arabia. The hub plans to start operations in 2027, capturing and storing up to 9 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Phase one of the CCS Hub is intended to capture CO2 from three Aramco gas plants and other downstream industrial facilities. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia aims to capture and store 44 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2035.
November 2, 2022
Founding partners ExxonMobil, the University of Southampton and the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership have launched a new low carbon initiative in southern England. The Solent Cluster involves more than 30 manufacturers, engineering companies, academic institutions, logistics and infrastructure operators and other regional and international businesses.
Once operational later this decade, and with low carbon hydrogen and CCS playing a central role, the project could substantially reduce CO2 emissions through the introduction of sustainable fuels for local transportation, aviation, shipping and residential heating.
August 30, 2022
Equinor and Wintershall Dea are exploring the possibility of building a CO2 pipeline under the North Sea that could transport around 20% of all German industrial emissions and store them offshore in Germany. This would be part of developing a European CCS value chain.
August 29, 2022
Northern Lights has signed its first commercial agreement on cross border CO2 transport and storage. Yara Sluiskil, an ammonia and fertiliser plant in the Netherlands, have agreed terms with Northern Lights to transport and store 800,000 tonnes of captured CO2 per year starting in 2025.
August 3, 2022
Six Korean companies have signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia’s state energy company Petronas to establish the Shepherd CCS Project, aiming to create a full carbon capture, transport and storage value chain between the two countries.
The project will undertake conceptual and feasibility studies and involves evaluating potential CO2 storage sites in Malaysia and exploration of other areas across the CCS value chain, including the strengthening of cross-border CO2 transportation. Malaysia aims to become a leading regional CCS solutions hub.
July 8, 2022
The European Innovation Fund granted €190 million HeidelbergCement’s Bulgarian subsidiary Devnya Cement for its ANRAV CCS project. The aim is to capture 800,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the high-tech clinker and cement plant and transport it by pipeline to a depleted offshore gas field under the Black Sea for permanent storage. The project could start operations by 2028 and would be open to other industries in the border regions of Romania and Greece.
June 27, 2022
CNOOC, ExxonMobil, Shell, and the Guangdong Provincial Development & Reform Commission signed a memorandum of understanding for the evaluation of a world-scale CCUS project in China at the Dayawan Petrochemical Industrial Park in Huizhou.
The project could capture up to 10 million mt/year of carbon dioxide from one of China’s largest industrial areas. The project could also serve as a model for the chemical industry as one of the first petrochemical projects to be decarbonized.
May 27, 2022
bp is working with Linde to advance a CCS project that will capture and store CO₂ from Linde’s hydrogen production facilities in the greater Houston area. That will enable Linde to produce low carbon hydrogen for the region, while creating infrastructure to store CO₂ captured from other industrial facilities. bp will appraise, develop and permit the storage sites. Linde will use its technology and expertise to capture and compress CO₂ from its hydrogen production facilities.
May 3, 2022
Chevron New Energies division announced an MOU with Talos Energy and Carbonvert for an expanded joint venture to develop the Bayou Bend CCS hub in southeast Texas. The Bayou Bend CCS project site encompasses over 40,000 gross acres and, based on Talos and Carbonvert’s preliminary estimates, could potentially sequester 225 to 276 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from industrial sources in the area.
February 9, 2022
Eni, the transport & storage operator of the UK’s HyNet North West Cluster, signed agreements with 19 industrial companies to capture and store CO2 emissions in Liverpool Bay. HyNet is one of two priority CCUS hubs selected by the UK government in October 2021. It plans to start operations in 2025.
January 27, 2022
The European Commission has awarded Northern Lights €4 million. The funding is for Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) studies for the expansion of the transport and storage capacity to over 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
The planned expansion will include subsea facilities and capacity increase of the onshore receiving terminal in Øygarden.
January 25, 2022
Net Zero Teesside (NZT) submitted a bid into Phase 2 of the UK Government’s CCUS cluster sequencing project for support to build the world’s first first commercial scale gas fired power station with carbon capture. This is the anchor project for the NZT CCUS hub and will capture and store up to two million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
The CCUS Hub is designed to support policy-makers, potential hub developers and emitters interested in setting up a CCUS hub by sharing learnings from the most advanced hubs and identifying new ones.