The CCS hub in Norway: some insights from 22 years of saline aquifer storage

Abstract

The development of industrial-scale CCS in Norway, starting with the Sleipner project in 1996, gives a uniquely long track record of experience with CCS and provides valuable insights for the projected global growth in CCS. By the end of 2017, the Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS projects had captured and stored 22 Mt of CO2 in saline aquifers offshore Norway. CO2 plume monitoring observations at Sleipner can be used to indicate an overall storage efficiency of around 5% of the pore volume, with approximately one tenth of this volume dissolved in the brine phase. These estimates are consistent with the fluid dynamics of CO2 injection in which a gravity dominated processes are expected to give efficiencies in the range of 1-6%. Future projects may be able to find ways of improving these efficiencies.