Carbon capture revolution to support jobs in Scotland
SCOTLAND could become a powerhouse in the global carbon capture and storage (CCS) business with hundreds of jobs in prospect in coming years, a key player in the emerging industry has said.
Oil and gas heavyweight Nick Cooper leads the Storrega Geotechnoolgies business that acquired control of the pioneering Acorn CCS scheme in Scotland with the backing of deeppocketed international investors.
Acorn has been held up as a model for a technology that could be deployed on a massive scale around the world to help tackle climate change.
Developed initially by a small business based in Banchory working with giants such as Shell, Acorn will involve pumping carbon dioxide offshore for storage in depleted North Sea fields.
The expectation is the facilities could be used to handle emissions from industries across Scotland and to support the development of clean hydrogen fuel.
While there are other CCS projects under development on the Humber and Merseyside, Mr Cooper thinks Acorn has huge advantages.
As well as storage sites offshore, these include a processing plant at St Fergus on the Aberdeenshire coast. This is linked to pipelines that take gas from the North Sea and transport it across the Central Belt and south of the Border. A deepwater port at Peterhead could be used to ship in carbon dioxide from across Europe.
“So you can move fast. It should be the first of the UK projects to be operational and you can move at scale,” says Mr Cooper.
Having worked on big oil and gas developments around the world, Mr Cooper is confident the nature of the North Sea basin confers huge advantages on countries in the vicinity.
“The UK and Norway will probably be the dominant players for CCS in Europe. The North Sea is ideal for it; it can be done safely, commercially and at scale.”
Mr Cooper is confident any fears people may have about the risks involved in storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide underground are misplaced.
“CCS is using technology that has been used by the oil and gas industry for a hundred years. The industry knows very well how to extract molecules at depth from under the sea and use them and it’s really just a reverse process,” says Mr Cooper, who completed a doctorate in geophysics at the University of Leicester before entering the oil industry with the former BG group in 1993.
He is also sure sceptics who question the economics of CCS will be proved wrong.
The Acorn project passed a landmark on Friday when Shell and the North Sea-focused Harbour Energy oil and gas business became equal partners with Storrega. The firms said it expects Acorn to be operational in the mid-2020s, “providing a clear pathway to help Scotland and the UK to meet their net zero targets”. Shell and the Harbourowned Chrysaor have been involved with Acorn since the early days.
Storrega is backed by Australian investment bank Macquarie, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Japanese industrial giant Mitsui, who have their eyes on a global market. “To be useful carbon storage needs at least 2,000 Acorn-type projects around the world,” reckons Mr Cooper, who says Scotland could reap huge benefits.
“If you look at the facilities we are building it will be at least hundreds of jobs if not more, if you think about the offshore storage as an enabler,” he says.
Noting that oil and gas knowledge gained in the North Sea was exported from the 70s around the world, Mr Cooper notes: “Scotland is ideally placed to do exactly that with this new wave of green low and zero carbon stuff.”