Wintershall Dea awarded second storage licence for CO2 in Norway

Wintershall Dea and its partner Altera have been awarded the Havstjerne CO2 storage licence in the Norwegian North Sea by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. The licence is located 135 kilometres southwest of Stavanger and will be operated by Wintershall Dea, holding 50 per cent of the shares. The estimated annual storage capacity amounts to up to seven million tonnes.

Hugo Dijkgraaf, member of Wintershall Dea’s Board of Executive Directors as well as its Chief Technology Officer, said:

“This second licence award in Norway supports our ambitious target to build a global carbon management portfolio that potentially can abate 20 to 30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2040. We are working intensively on delivering the infrastructure Norway needs to become a hub for European carbon storage.”

The Havstjerne partnership sees the award as a necessary step towards developing the Norwegian Continental Shelf into a leading European CO2 storage area. Norway has the largest underground storage potential in Europe and can play a key role in efforts to achieve climate targets when efficiently linked to continental European emitters. 

Wintershall Dea and Altera intend to develop a system for transporting CO2 by ship to the Havstjerne license and thus offer a flexible and scalable solution, offering storage to emitters from around Europe. The partnership has already investigated clusters of emitters in the Baltics, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain for sourcing CO2 for storage.

“CCS as a decarbonisation strategy is expected to expand and grow significantly in Europe the coming years, so this is only the beginning. The world needs CCS on a massive scale, and we are proud to be part of the solution.  Together with our strong partner Wintershall Dea, we are ready to do our part in leading the industry towards a sustainable future”, said Ingvild Sæther, CEO of Altera Infrastructure Group Ltd.

In addition to the awarded Havstjerne licence, Wintershall Dea operates the Luna licence in the Norwegian North Sea for future storage of CO2 and is working with Equinor in the NOR-GE project on a 900-kilometre-long CO2 pipeline. The company is ideally placed to build a European value chain from the planned carbon collection points in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, to suitable storage reservoirs in Norway and thus offers a large-scale solution for European industrial emissions to be stored safely and cost efficient under the North Sea.

In March 2023, Wintershall Dea initiated the first CO2 storage in the Danish North Sea as part of Project Greensand and proved the technology’s feasibility and safety. For the first time in the EU, the entire CCS value chain is being implemented across European borders. Together with its CCS plans in Norway, Wintershall Dea is underlining its ambition to make a vital contribution to Europe’s climate targets.