Six lander systems have been installed at the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) project, the UK's first commercial-scale offshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, to monitor the seabed before CO2 injection starts.
Sonardyne, a Kraken Robotics company, reported the start of baseline environmental and passive seismic monitoring at the project, following the deployment of the six seabed lander systems at the Endurance CO2 store, in the Southern North Sea, about 150 kilometers off the coast of Teesside.
The monitoring landers will support the long-term measurement, monitoring and verification (MMV) program for offshore CO2 storage by helping establish the robust, repeatable data needed to monitor the reservoir integrity effectively over time.
Three autonomous environmental monitoring landers designed and built by Sonardyne and three co-located TIAMAT passive seismic monitoring systems from K.U.M. are collecting baseline data on seawater chemistry, currents, seabed conditions and passive seismic activity before future CO2 injection operations begin. This will support continued monitoring across the storage lifecycle.
“Confidence in offshore CO₂ storage starts with good data. By delivering and deploying these environmental and micro-seismic monitoring systems, and managing their ongoing operation and data retrieval, Sonardyne is supporting a key part of NEP’s MMV programme at Endurance," said Stephen Auld, Business Development Manager for Custom Projects at Sonardyne.
“For offshore CO₂ storage, that continuity matters. Long-term assurance depends on reliable data gathered across the full storage lifecycle, not a single point-in-time measurement — a role that draws directly on our experience in seabed-resident monitoring, acoustic communications and offshore integrity monitoring.”
NEP, a joint venture of BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies, is delivering CO2 transportation and storage infrastructure centred on the Endurance store, which is about 1,000 meters beneath the seabed, as part of the East Coast Cluster decarbonization program across Teesside and the Humber.
Storage is expected to start in 2028, making it the first operational CCS project in the UK. The initial phase is expected to see up to 100 million tons of CO2 stored in the Endurance aquifer over a 25-year period.
“The deployment of these monitoring systems is a great example of the expertise and innovation that is helping to deliver CCS in the UK. Establishing a robust environmental and seismic baseline before operations begin, is a vital part of our long-term monitoring programme, providing the data required to demonstrate the safe and secure storage of CO₂ over time," said Mike Stephen, Head of Technical at NEP.