The Norwegian government has offered Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) a stake in a $1-billion carbon capture storage project at Statoil’s Mongstad oil refinery in Norway.
The offer was made at a meeting between a Norwegian delegation, headed by state secretary, petroleum and energy, Per Rune Henriksen, and ONGC Chairman and Managing Director R S Sharma and Director (offshore) Sudhir Vasudeva earlier this week.
Norway is also offering India technology for deepwater and subsea exploration.
Speaking to Business Standard, Henriksen said, “We are looking for partnership with Indian companies in Technology Centre, Mongstad, and have invited the ONGC chairman to visit the facility.” On the equity being offered to ONGC, he said it was “a matter of discussion”.
The Norwegian government holds 75.12 per cent in the project, while state-owned Statoil owns 20 per cent. Shell and South African state-owned company Sasol own 2.44 per cent each.
Located at the Statoil Mongstad oil refinery, northwest of Bergen, the CO2 Technology Centre would have access to flue gas from the gas-fired combined heat and power plant and the refinery catalytic cracker. CO2 stands for carbon dioxide.
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After the development of a viable technology, the process could be commercially used in countries like India and China, which have a growing demand for carbon-emitting energy. The partners have already invested about $450 million in the project. Carbon capture and storage technology involves capturing CO2 emissions from industrial sources and transporting them by pipeline to sites, where they are injected into deep rock formations for permanent storage. The centre will test two types of capture technology on flue gas, both from the Mongstad refinery cracker and a gas-fired combined heat power plant on the site. While the gas-based power plant yields CO2 contents of about 3.5 per cent, the refinery cracker gives 13 per cent of flue gas, equivalent to a coal-based power plant.
Designed to capture about 100,000 tonnes CO2 annually, the project was earlier expected to be completed in 2011, but funding issues have delayed its full commissioning to 2012. In May 2010, Sasol joined the project. “The partnerships are important for us since we want to get the point of views of other companies into the project,” said Henriksen.