PGS wins seismic acquisition contract for UK CO2 capture and storage project

British oil and gas major BP has contracted Norway’s Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) to deliver a carbon capture and storage (CCS) 3D seismic acquisition scope over the Endurance reservoir offshore the UK.

Seismic acquisition is scheduled to start during April at the site located about 145 kilometers off the coast from Teesside and around 85 kilometers from the Humber coast, and complete in June.

Oil and gas majors BP, Eni, Equinor, Shell, TotalEnergies and National Grid are developing the project as part of their Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), announced in October 2020, that aims to develop offshore carbon dioxide ‎‎(CO2) transport and storage infrastructure in the UK North Sea, with BP as the operator.

The ‎infrastructure is set to serve the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH) ‎projects to establish decarbonized industrial clusters in Teesside and Humberside.

“PGS has a history of pioneering the marine 3D seismic market and the Endurance survey is one of the industry’s first publicised awards of a 3D acquisition contract in North Sea specifically designed to address CCS project development challenge. In the second half of 2021 we announced a sale of MultiClient data for CCS purposes and now we are very pleased to announce the award of an acquisition contract,” said PGS president and CEO, Rune Olav Pedersen.

“Numerous research reports estimate a significant need for CCS storage going forward. Even in the more conservative projections, seismic acquisition for CCS purposes is likely to constitute a significant new market for our industry.”

NEP’s East Coast Cluster (ECC) was selected by the UK government in October 2021 as one of the first two clusters to be taken forward as part of its CCUS cluster sequencing process. The other selected cluster is HyNet. Both were named as Track 1, putting them on course for deployment by the mid-2020s.

BP recently announced two consortia to participate in a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) ‎competition for the Net Zero Teesside Power project and the Northern Endurance ‎Partnership’s carbon compression infrastructure in Teesside.

Investing in carbon capture, usage ‎and storage (CCUS) is a key point of the UK government’s 10-point plan for a green industrial ‎revolution and the award is said to represent the next step towards the proposed development of the UK’s ‎first full-scale integrated power and carbon capture project.

The winner to take the project forward into construction will be selected in 2023.