Harbour Energy’s application to build a 55-km onshore pipeline for its Humber-based 10-million tonne/year Viking Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) CO2 transportation and storage network in eastern England, is under assessment by the UK’s Planning Inspectorate.
The pipeline would transport CO2 captured in the Immingham industrial area to the former Theddlethorpe gas terminal site on the Lincolnshire coast. From there, the CO2 would be piped 140 km offshore to the depleted Viking gas fields, 2.7 km beneath the seabed, for permanent storage.
The Inspectorate’s assessment is the next stage in Harbour acquiring a development consent order for the pipeline, following consultation and engagement with relevant parties.
Harbour earlier this year won Track 2 status for both Viking and the Acorn CCS project in northeast Scotland as part of the UK Government’s CCS cluster sequencing process, allowing both projects to move into front-end engineering and design discussions with the government ahead of final investment decisions (OGJ Online, July 31, 2023).
Viking would be expandable to 15-million tpy by 2035 and has verified storage capacity of 300 million tonnes.