Equinor and French gas transmission operator GRTgaz will develop a carbon dioxide (CO2) transport system for captured CO2 from industrial emitters in France to permanent storage offshore Norway via the planned CO2 Highway Europe pipeline project.
The development will consist of a network of onshore CO2 pipelines, to be developed by GRTGaz, that will connect France’s Dunkirk industrial area to Equinor’s CO2 Highway Europe, a large-scale CO2 pipeline being planned by Equinor also connecting Zeebrugge, Belgium, to a portfolio of storage sites under the seabed offshore Norway.
GRTgaz will build a 19-mile (30-km) onshore pipeline network in the Dunkirk region and a compressor station in Dunkirk, sending the CO2 into the offshore pipeline connecting to the CO2 Highway Europe. The capacity in the initial phase will be 3 to 5.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The capacity can be expanded to also accommodate CO2 captured at other industrial clusters in France.
Equinor and GRTgaz will cooperate in the development of the CO2 transmission and storage infrastructures and associated services, including network planning, technical design and industrial safety, interoperability, regulatory approvals, and institutional relations. Feasibility studies are under way, with the goal of launching basic engineering studies at the end of 2024 and commissioning in 2029.