BP joins Humberside’s Viking CCS project

BP has bought into Harbour Energy’s plans to develop the Viking CCS transportation and storage project in the UK’s heavily industrialised Humberside region.

BP has taken a 40% non-operating share in Viking, which would include the infrastructure to transport emissions captured from heavy industry in the region and store them offshore in the depleted Viking gas fields. The partners say the project could meet one third of the UK government’s target to capture 30m t/y of CO2 by 2030. The emissions would run through the Lincolnshire Offshore Gas Gathering System (LOGGS) pipeline which both firms already have a share in. BP and Harbour Energy plan to repurpose LOGGS for the Viking project, and also plan to use a new CO2 shipping terminal at Immingham port, which would receive emissions captured elsewhere in the UK and store them in the Viking fields.

According to government figures, the Humberside region produces the most industrial emissions (around 10m t/y of CO2 in 2018) due to its concentration of heavy manufacturing including steelmaking, refining, chemicals and cement production.

The announcement follows the UK government’s decision last month to launch Track 2 of its CCS cluster development process, which named Viking CCS as one of two transport and storage systems contenders, alongside the Acorn project in Scotland. BP and Harbour Energy said they would wait on the outcome of the Track 2 process and expect to make a final investment decision next year. Harbour Energy recently published a report on the project describing the Humberside region as a potential “net zero superplace” in which it predicted Viking would result in £7bn of investment across the CCS value chain over the next decade, create 10,000 jobs during construction, and produce £4bn of gross value add (GVA) to the local area.

Anja Dotzenrath, executive vice president of gas and low carbon energy at BP, said “We’re extremely excited to be joining Viking CCS, a project which can play an instrumental role in helping to decarbonise the UK and providing CO2 transport and storage as a service to emitters across industry sectors and geographies, including as a future CO2 shipping destination.”

The partners say the project could startup in 2027 storing 10m t/y of CO2, rising to 15m t/y of CO2 by 2035.