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Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Six companies have applied for the chance to explore the potential to build the infrastructure necessary to store carbon dioxide in the Norwegian waters of the North Sea, the government announced Wednesday. Six energy companies, from Germany's Wintershall to Norway's own Aker BP, applied to become commercial players in the effort to sequester CO2, a potent greenhouse gas.
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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is an evolving part of the energy transition, capturing emissions from power sector and industrial polluters.
The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the nation's energy regulator, claims "extensive experience" in storing carbon offshore and is working to map suitable areas for further development.
The NPD awarded its first permits for carbon storage offshore in 2019 at a site near the Troll natural gas field in the North Sea. The agency believes the North Sea has the potential to store more than 80 billion tons of CO2, which is the equivalent of 1,000 years worth of Norwegian emissions.
Norway is not alone in looking for ways to utilize the technology. The U.S. Energy Department estimates the entire Gulf Coast region could store as much as 500 billion metric tons of CO2 using CCS.
Canadian energy company Enbridge in November signed with Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum -- known simply as Oxy -- to develop a sequestration hub for carbon dioxide in the Corpus Christi area of the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Chevron and 10 other companies in 2021 expressed interest in developing large-scale CCS technology in the Houston area. If built, the companies behind the project said it could capture as much as 50 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030.
Norway, however, is different from the United States. While Norway is also among the global leaders in oil and natural gas production, it's unique in that it powers its economy almost entirely on renewable resources, from onshore hydroelectricity to offshore wind.
