Shearwater has announced the award of a contract by BP, on behalf of the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), for geophysical data processing and imaging to advance the East Coast Cluster.
The NEP enables the East Coast Cluster by providing the common infrastructure needed to transport CO₂ from emitters in the Humber and Teesside. The CO₂ will then be securely sequestered in the Endurance carbon store offshore in the North Sea. NEP is a partnership between BP, National Grid Ventures, Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.
The seismic data processing and imaging activity will be executed by geophysical experts at Shearwater’s UK Processing & Imaging centre over a period of approximately eight months. Multisensor geophysical data will be passed through advanced algorithms, tests and analyses to provide a dataset which will enable NEP to characterise subsurface structures with potential for carbon storage. Geophysical surveys are used in carbon storage projects to survey and monitor the subsurface geology ensuring secure storage over time.
The project will take advantage of Shearwater’s Reveal software and Monsoon digital cloud programme to execute the work, with extensive collaboration between BP and Shearwater personnel throughout the project.
Irene Waage Basilli, CEO of Shearwater, said: “Shearwater is taking a leading role in supporting our clients to advance their carbon storage projects. We have the geophysical expertise, technologies and platforms to help our clients achieve their net zero and low carbon goals through developing carbon storage at scale, and we are pleased to support bp, and their partners, with this ground-breaking project.”
Andy Lane, Managing Director of the Northern Endurance Partnership, said: “The Southern North Sea has some of the most ideal carbon storage sites anywhere in the world, and the East Coast Cluster has the capacity to store up to 1 billion tonnes of CO₂. We are aiming for first injection from 2026, and by 2038 will be capturing and storing up to 23 million tonnes of CO₂ per year from a wide range of industrial and power projects on Teesside and the Humber. We look forward to working with Shearwater on this first-of-a-kind carbon storage project that will create thousands of jobs and help establish the Teesside and Humber regions as a globally-competitive climate-friendly hub for industry and innovation”.
The East Coast Cluster was named as one of the UK’s first CCUS clusters following a successful bid in Phase-1 of the UK Government’s CCUS cluster sequencing process in October 2021.
In March 2022, 25 projects within the East Coast Cluster were shortlisted for evaluation within Phase-2 of the cluster sequencing process. The projects, covering power, industrial carbon capture (ICC) and hydrogen, were adjudged to have met the eligibility criteria. The projects will now be evaluated, with an update on successful bids expected from July 2022.
