Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) has announced Final Investment Decision (FID) and financial close on its first CCS project in the United Kingdom. NEP (Equinor 45%, BP 45%, and TotalEnergies 10%) is the CO2transportation and storage provider for the East Coast Cluster (ECC), one of the UK Government’s first selected CCS clusters. The NEP infrastructure will initially serve 3 CCS projects in the Teesside region (NZT Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture), which were selected for first connection to NEP by Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in March 2023, as part of the UK’s cluster sequencing process for carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS).
With the FID, the NEP project can proceed to the execution phase, starting construction in mid-2025 and beginning operations in 2028. It will include a CO2 gathering network and onshore compression facilities as well as a 145 km offshore pipeline and subsea injection and monitoring facilities for the Endurance saline aquifer located around 1,000 m below the seabed. NEP could transport and store up to 4 MtCO2/year from three Teesside projects initially, rising to an average of up to 23 MtCO2 by 2035 with future expansion of the East Coast Cluster.
Under the NZT Power project (75% BP and 25% Equinor), which is also part of the East Coast Cluster, a 742 MW gas-fired power project will be built and equipped with an up to 2 Mt/year CCS unit that will transport and store CO2 emissions into the NEP project.