Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor has walked away from the Barents Blue ammonia production project and the associated Polaris offshore CO₂ storage project in the Barents Sea after the expiry of its cooperation agreement with the other project partners.

Equinor gave no further details of its decision to leave the two projects located in northern Norway. Spanish fertiliser group Fertiberia has come in as a new project partner on Barents Blue and Polaris, replacing Equinor and Norwegian energy company Var Energi, which has also left both projects. Norway’s Horisont Energi remains as the operator of Barents Blue.

“We are pleased to see that Horisont Energi will continue to mature the Barents Blue project with a new partner and build on the progress and experiences from our partnership,” says Grete Tveit, senior vice president for low carbon solutions at Equinor.

Equinor says it “remains positive” about exploring solutions to supply natural gas to Barents Blue from the Hammerfest LNG project.

2mn t/yr — Potential capacity of Polaris

Equinor was granted an operating licence by Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy licences for Polaris in April 2022. At the time it said Polaris, and the North Sea Smeaheia storage project for which it was also granted a licence, were “important building blocks for developing the Norwegian continental shelf into a leading province for CO₂ storage in Europe”.

The first stage of the Polaris project includes capture, transport and storage of 2mn t/yr of CO₂, it said on receiving the licence in 2022.

Equinor has several hydrogen and CCS projects in different phases in Norway and in other markets. In Norway, the Northern Lights CO₂ transport and storage project, part of the Longship project, is already under construction and on track to be ready to receive CO₂ in 2024.

Equinor and Germany’s RWE recently agreed to work together to develop large-scale value chains for low-carbon hydrogen, with a production facility in Norway and an export pipeline to Germany.

By 2030, Equinor has an ambition that 50pc of its gross investments will be dedicated to renewables and low-carbon solutions, such as CCS and hydrogen.

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Author: Stuart Penson