Maersk Oil and Maersk Tankers, part of the Danish A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, have entered into co-operation Finnish utilities Fortum and Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) aiming to develop a joint carbon emissions abatement project in the area of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
With the aim is to capture, transport and store in excess of 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year, the project will combine carbon capture at the Meri-Pori power plant with CO2 transportation by Maersk Tankers’ vessels and geological storage. Maersk Oil will investigate the possibility of providing final CO2 storage in the depleting oil and gas fields of the Danish North Sea, as well as the potential use of CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).
Subject to successful project development, the project will seek qualification for funding under the European Union’s CCS Demonstration Programme. The selection for this funding is expected to take place in 2011 and the final investment decision in 2011 to 2012, with aims for the project to be in operation by 2015.
“CCS has the potential to become one of the key solutions in climate change mitigation. Maersk’s solid experience with sea transport and oil production in the North Sea, combined with the power plant expertise of Fortum, TVO and Siemens, make the project a very strong candidate for demonstrating CCS technology”, said Tapio Kuula President and CEO of Fortum.
Søren Skou, CEO of Maersk Tankers and member of the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group’s Executive Board, added: “Shipping CO2 in tanker vessels is a cost efficient and flexible way to get CO2 from power plants to offshore storage sites, which makes it a suitable solution for large CO2 emission sources such as coal-fired power plants, especially in the emerging phase of CCS.”
The collaborative project deems CCS technology and enhanced oil recovery based on CO2 as having the potential to become key solutions to the energy security and the climate change challenges currently facing Europe.
