Sonardyne comes on board UK’s first offshore carbon storage project

UK-headquartered Sonardyne has been appointed to deliver baseline environmental monitoring services for the UK’s first offshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) site, being developed by a joint venture of BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies.

The project, being developed by the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) around 75 kilometers east of Flamborough Head, will comprise an onshore CO2 gathering network, compression facilities and a 145-kilometer offshore pipeline connected to subsea injection facilities in the Endurance saline aquifer located around 1,000 meters below the seabed.

This infrastructure will initially serve the Teesside-based East Coast Cluster (ECC) carbon capture projects – NZT Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture – that were selected for first connection to NEP by DESNZ in March 2023 as part of the UK’s cluster sequencing process for carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS).

Under its contract, Sonardyne will provide environmental monitoring in the form of seabed landers at key locations above and around the subsurface Endurance site, the saline aquifer located 145 kilometers off the coast of Teesside, where captured CO2 will be stored.

According to the company, the seabed landers will be equipped with Sonardyne’s Edge data processing application, power management and acoustic through-water communications to enable long-term, remote battery-operated deployment. Each lander will also contain a suite of hardware, including Sonardyne’s Origin 600 ADCP, Wavefront’s passive sonar array and multiple third-party sensors.

Combined, this technology can detect small changes in water chemistry across a wide area, while the data can be harvested, without retrieving the lander, using wireless subsea acoustic communication techniques, Sonardyne noted.

Monitoring of the site will begin in the summer of 2026 to provide baseline data for a duration of two years before the transportation and storage of captured CO2 begins.

“Being selected to deliver subsea environmental monitoring for this landmark project is a real honour and a testament to Sonardyne’s significant experience and expertise in this field,” said Stephen Auld, Business Development Manager for Custom Projects at Sonardyne.

“As a company who are already carbon neutral in our UK operations, we are passionate about combatting climate change and the drive for carbon neutrality. We are delighted to be working with NEP in delivering cutting edge marine technology to ensure their safe and successful offshore carbon storage operations.”

NEP has been granted the first Carbon Dioxide Transport and Storage Licence in the UK under the Transportation and Storage Regulatory Investment (TRI) regime that unlocks private investment in long-term infrastructure by providing incentives and protections in developing a nascent CCUS market in the UK.

The project has also been granted a CO2 storage permit by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which will enable CO2 injection and storage to commence when the infrastructure is complete.

Construction is expected to begin this year, while first injection could come as early as 2027 and start up in 2028. With a permitted injection rate of 4 million tons annually, averaged over a duration of 25 years, this could reach a total of 100 million tons.

U.S.-headquartered offshore drilling company Noble Corporation has been selected to drill six firm wells for the NEP project using its Noble Innovator jack-up rig, slated to begin in Q3 2026.

BP, which is the operator, and Equinor each have 45% stakes in the project, while 10% is held by TotalEnergies.