Equinor to disclose Sleipner CO2 storage data in push to advance development

Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor and its partners will disclose a dataset from the Sleipner field offshore Norway; the world’s first offshore CCS plant, in a push to advance innovation and development on the field of CO2 storage.

Since 1996, the Sleipner field has been used as a facility for carbon capture and storage by Equinor as operator and a group of partnering companies. This is the longest ongoing project on CO2 storage in the world, according to Equinor.

Each year about 1 million tonnes CO2 from the natural gas is captured and stored at Sleipner. This has provided unique insight into what happens with carbon stored in the underground over longer periods of time, Equinor said on Wednesday.

“For over 20 years we have had a first-hand experience of safe storage of CO2 in a reservoir. We believe this insight can be valuable for both our industry, research communities, and others working on making CO2 storage a central part of the ongoing energy transition into the low carbon future,” says Torbjørn F. Folgerø, chief digital officer and senior vice president in Equinor.

All data will be published via the SINTEF-led CO2 Data Share Consortium in September this year – a partnership supported by the Norwegian CLIMIT research program and the US Department of Energy.

CO2 Storage Data Consortium is an open international network for data and knowledge exchange, initiated by Equinor, SINTEF, University of Illinois and IEAGHG in 2016. With the financial support from Gassnova and US Department of Energy the project CO2 DataShare was launched in 2018.

Equinor emphasized it had shared CO2 storage and monitoring data with the research community for the past 15 years. By making the data openly available, the Sleipner partnership and SINTEF seek to further advance both innovation and development in the field of carbon storage.

“Ever since Equinor shared the first Sleipner datasets, researchers across the world have used it to understand flow processes, enable more accurate predictions and develop methods for safe CO2 storage. Access to the Sleipner datasets can accelerate the development of knowledge and technologies essential for operating CO2 storage sites and enable faster deployment of CCS, a measure The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states is critical to limit the global warming,” says Eli Aamot, executive vice president in SINTEF.

A prototype for the data sharing will be available online for selected test users in June 2019. The digital platform for sharing CO2 storage data is planned to be online in September 2019.

The project period is 2018-2020, and the budget is 7,150,000 NOK ($848,000). CO2 DataShare is coordinated with the Norwegian CCS Research Center (NCCS).

Sleipner licensees are Equinor, ExxonMobil, LOTOS Exploration and Production, and KUFPEC Norway.

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