Xodus Group environmental statement supports Northern Endurance Partnership move to financial close

A key planning document, developed by Xodus Group, helped to pave the way for a major carbon capture and storage (CCS) project to become the UK’s first to reach financial close.

In October, the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, agreed to the grant of consent for the Northern Endurance Partnership Environmental Statement.

This decision opened the door for the award of the first ever UK carbon storage permit by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) in December, followed by the NEP and shareholders, Equinor, bp and TotalEnergies announcing financial close on the UK's first carbon capture and storage projects.

The environmental statement (ES), delivered by global energy consultancy Xodus over the course of two years, is the first ES for a CCS project in the UK to have reached this stage.

Teesside (Source: NEP)

NEP is a project of major importance to the UK’s net-zero ambitions. The ES was a novel undertaking for Xodus, covering offshore carbon dioxide (CO₂) transportation and storage scopes for onshore Teesside-based carbon capture projects.

Steve Swindell, Xodus CEO, said: “This is a major milestone, not just for the Northern Endurance Partnership but for the UK’s carbon capture and storage sector as a whole. Never before has a development like this reached such an advanced stage, and I would like to thank the Xodus team for all their work in delivering an Environmental Statement of the highest order, as well as to bp for allowing us to play our part in this vital project.

“The evidence is clear: achieving net-zero will be virtually impossible without the rapid scale up of CCS. Research from Xodus forecasts that the volume of CO₂ being injected into the North Sea by 2050 will be equivalent to the natural gas currently being extracted from the basin, and the Northern Endurance Partnership will be a vital cog in that machine.”

Contained in the ES is an assessment of the offshore elements of NEP, including the installation of 145 km of pipeline, and the drilling and installation of wells that will enable injection of CO₂ into the Endurance reservoir.

The work was delivered by an integrated team across bp and Xodus, and drew on different disciplines from across Xodus, including Xodus’ Geohazards division in the US which supported with the analysis of geophysical data.

Mairi Dorward, Xodus’ Environmental Specialist who led on the ES, said: “The assessment of potential environmental impacts was conducted in close collaboration with NEP and a range of regulatory and other stakeholders. Our team routinely fed into the NEP design team the locally specific constraints, such as seabed, navigation, sensitive species and habitats, extending what would typically be required for an ES into the assessment of new technologies and potential impacts of the CO2 transmission and underground storage in a saline aquifer.”

NEP is the CO₂ transportation and storage provider for the East Coast Cluster (ECC). 

The NEP infrastructure will initially serve the Teesside-based East Coast Cluster carbon capture projects – NZT Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture – that were selected for first connection to NEP by DESNZ in March 2023 as part of the UK’s cluster sequencing process for carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS). 

NEP expects to commence construction from the middle of 2025 with start-up expected in 2028. The infrastructure will transport and permanently store up to an initial 4 MMtpy of CO₂.

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