PGNiG Upstream Norway, a subsidiary of Poland's ORLEN Group, has announced that it will join and operate the 2 Mt/year Polaris carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, located in the Norwegian Barents Sea and owned by Horisont Energi.
The two groups have signed a letter of intent which will see the ORLEN subsidiary become operator and acquire a stake of up to 50% in the Polaris licence. The process of bringing PGNiG on board the project is expected to be completed in December 2023. Polaris would mark ORLEN's first intended CO2 storage licence. The Polish company has notably set a goal of storing or utilising up to 3 Mt/year of CO2 by 2030.
The Polaris CCS project is expected to have a total carbon storage capacity of more than 100 MtCO2, which will have a production capacity of 3 kt/day of blue ammonia. It was granted a storage licence by Norwegian authorities in June 2022 and is still in an early development phase.