UK-based oil and gas subsea equipment specialists Express Engineering has been specified for a ground-breaking initiative that could significantly improve the decarbonisation of industrial emissions and ease the removal of harmful gases from the environment.
The development, which has the backing of the Norwegian government, sees Express Engineering participating in a long-term environmental project that will allow liquefied CO2 to be transported by undersea pipeline to a subsea storage facility located in the North Sea.
Involving carbon storage specialists Northern Lights and leading carbon capture technology firm Aker Carbon Capture, the project is due to become fully operational in 2024 and will allow industrial sites in Norway and companies across Europe to capture and store their carbon emissions safely and permanently deep under the seabed off the Norwegian coast.
Express Engineering, which recently opened a new 48,000 sq. ft. purpose-built test and assembly centre in Gateshead in the North East of England, is supplying subsea actuators, which are being shipped to Aker Solutions’ plant in Curitiba, Brazil, where they will be installed on to the master valve block on a new sub-sea tree that will control the pipeline.
When initial trials start in 2022, the actuators will form an integral part of the flow control system when injecting the CO2 into a redundant well – the subsea system has been specifically adapted to reverse the flow to lock in carbon gases below the seafloor rather than operate in their usual role supporting the extraction of oil and gas.
Equinor, Shell, and Total are all investors in Northern Lights – Norway’s first licenced operator for CO2 storage on the Northern Continental Shelf and a major part of the Norwegian government’s ‘Longship’ carbon capture initiative.
