Energy & Industry / Energy

Carbon Capture & Storage (Sleipner)

From 15 September 1996 Norway's Sleipner platform has injected up to about a million tonnes of CO2 a year into a North Sea sandstone aquifer: the first large CO2 storage designed and monitored as such.

Sleipner West gas contains up to 9% CO2, while Norway allows only 2.5% in exported gas, and Norway had introduced a CO2 tax in 1991. The operator therefore separates the CO2 and injects it into the Utsira Formation about 1,000 m below the seabed, where repeated seismic and gravity surveys follow the plume. Oil companies had injected CO2 since 1972 to push out more oil, but Sleipner was the first to treat storage itself as the goal, and Equinor's figure of about a million tonnes a year was later revised down by about 30% for 2017-19. The Global CCS Institute counted 77 operating capture-and-storage projects in October 2025, up from 50 a year earlier, and in August 2025 Northern Lights injected its first CO2 under the North Sea.