National Grid awards contract for White Rose CCS project

National Grid, which is managing transportation and storage for the White Rose CCS demonstration project, has awarded the engineering and design contract to Genesis.

Genesis, an oil and gas engineering specialist, will perform a risk and cost assessment for the transportation system planned to run from Drax in Humberside to the storage site in the North Sea.

This follows the government announcement last December that the White Rose CCS project could begin its Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study as part of its programme to commercialise CCS.

National Grid, providing transportation and storage, is working with the main consortium, Capture Power Limited, consisting of Alstom, Drax and BOC on the White Rose project to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store them permanently in the North Sea.

Peter Boreham, National Grid director of European business development said: “We are delighted that Genesis won through this competitive process and are now on board to provide their expertise to plan and develop the project.  It’s another step on the way to demonstrating that CCS has an important part to play in the future energy mix.”

John Cambridge, Genesis managing director said: “This is a flagship project for the UK and one Genesis is extremely proud to be part of. We believe our skills in developing optimised onshore, offshore and subsea facilities will be extremely important in enabling NGC to achieve a successful outcome.”

“The onshore and offshore pipeline infrastructure will have the capacity to transport up to 17 million tonnes of CO2  a year with the White Rose project requiring about 2 million tonnes. The CO2 would then be pumped in liquid form under high pressure into natural rock formations over a kilometre beneath the North Sea seabed for permanent storage.”