The Sleipner Project is the first large scale commercial application of carbon dioxide storage in a deep saline aquifer in the world. It has been operating successfully since 1996 when StatoilHydro
began injecting CO2 separated from natural gas produced from the Sleipner West gas field into a large, deep saline formation some 800 metres below the bed of the North Sea in Norway. The project is expected to store a total of 20 million tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime.
The CO2Store Project is investigating how lessons learned from existing CCS projects can be implemented on other aquifers in Europe, both offshore and onshore. The project aims to provide sound, scientifically-based methodologies for the assessment, planning, and long-term monitoring of underground CO2 storage and comprises two parts:
- Applying the knowledge and experience gained from CO2 storage at the Sleipner gas field to develop site-specific plans for storage operations elsewhere in Europe.
- To continue injection at Sleipner to firmly establish the long-term safety case for geological CO2 storage including specific work on monitoring techniques and alternative and smaller CO2 reservoirs.
CO2Store is the follow up to the European research project entitled Saline Aquifer CO2 Storage (SACS) which studied geological storage at Sleipner.
The Snohvit Project involves bringing huge volumes of natural gas to land for liquefaction and export from the first plant of its kind in Europe and the world’s northernmost liquefied natural gas facility. This project has been under development since 2002 and production is to commence during 2007.