courtesy Statoil

Statoil and Shell are pulling out of their large-scale carbon-dioxide injecton plan for the Draugen and Heidrun offshore fields offshore Norway, saying it’ll cost too much to capture and transport the globe-heating gas.

The two offshore platforms were to receive power from a carbon-treated Tjeldbergodden plant, a move that elated environmentalists and appeared to attract matching government funding.

Statoil declared Friday that a platform shut-down of a year for extensive modifications and the limited amount of extra oil derived at Draugan for the injected carbon-dioxide would be too much to bear.

After spending over 400 million kroner deciding the project’s feasibility, the two companies have determinted that while “technically feasible”, the plan would not be “commercially viable”.

The news comes less than a week after a government- and Statoil-organized carbon summit in Oslo sought to find regulatory means to speed the development of carbon capture and storage, or CCS.

Oil industry speakers had warned Statoil that carbon capture based on power projects alone was “challenged”. International Energy Agency director Claude Mandil had warned “carbon capture might not work.”

The biggest hurdles to large scale CCS continue to be capture costs and a legal framework, including a carbon price oil companies believe is “the price”.

ws@oilgas24.com