Oil Majors Partner to Develop UK’s First Large-Scale CCUS Project

European oil majors BP, Eni, Equinor, Occidental Petroleum, Shell and Total have entered into a partnership with the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI)  to move forward the Clean Gas Project, the UK’s first commercial full-chain carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) project in northeast England.

The idea is to form the Tees Valley CCUS Cluster, employing the “commercially viable” technology at scale. The project will combine CO₂ capture from new efficient low-carbon power generation and local industrial emitters in Teesside.

It will use natural gas to generate power, with CO₂ then captured and transported by pipeline for storage in a formation under the southern North Sea. As the project progresses, the team will be looking for additional partners across the full value chain.

Construction and operations will depend on agreements and approvals of all parties involved, OGCI said, noting the project would move into engineering design in 2019.

The UK government announced Wednesday an action plan to accelerate the deployment of CCUS, which also includes funding to another project, the Acorn scheme.