Mongstad plan for carbon capture delivered

StatoilHydro has today submitted its plan for carbon capture at Mongstad to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the Ministry of the Environment.

In connection with establishing the Mongstad energy project, StatoilHydro and the Norwegian government entered into an implementation agreement.

Under this agreement StatoilHydro undertook to prepare an overall plan for future carbon capture at Mongstad, north of Bergen (“Master plan”).

- The master plan addresses the most important challenges and sums up key issues associated with the technical feasibility of carbon capture at Mongstad. This is the first step along the way towards full-scale carbon capture at Mongstad. The project is still in an early stage and much work remains to be done, says Einar Strømsvåg, Vice President of Manufacturing in StatoilHydro.

The purpose of the master plan is to provide the best possible basis for the further process with full-scale carbon capture from the combined heat and power (CHP) station and other substantial sources at the refinery. In addition to the CHP station is the refinery’s cracker considered suitable for carbon capture.

The report describes the facility, technology and the most important risks associated with realising full-scale carbon capture. The plan addresses the principal challenges and summarises the need for studies and verification of individual technical solutions.

Carbon capture on the scale of millions of tonnes per year from exhaust and flue gases is unique on a global basis. The master plan confirms that carbon capture is possible and describes two main alternatives as to how this can be done at Mongstad:

* Alternative 1 allows carbon capture from the CHP station as quickly as possible based on the amine technology available today, normal industry practice for safe and rational project performance and an acceptable HSE risk level. Carbon capture from the cracker follows based on stepwise technology development.
* Alternative 2 allows simultaneous development of carbon capture from the CHP and the cracker, based on a stepwise technology development.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of StatoilHydro’s six priority areas in technology development. The organisation has played an active role in the management of CO2 since 1996.

The group operates some of the world’s largest projects within this field, on its own or together with others.

At full capacity, we can store three million tonnes of CO2 per year, removed from natural gas in the gas fields Sleipner in the North Sea, In Salah in Algeria and Snøhvit in the Barents Sea. In these projects, carbon dioxide is separated directly from the wellstream for reinjection into suitable reservoirs.

”Capture from exhaust gas/ flue gas at low pressure is different from and more challenging than capture from natural gas under high pressure. This is one of several factors that make it demanding to plan and implement full-scale carbon capture at Mongstad,” emphasises Mr Strømsvåg.