French energy service giant Technip said yesterday it had won the contract from Shell UK to deliver key services needed for the new gas-fired carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant planned for Peterhead.
Paris-based Technip announced it would provide front-end engineering design (Feed) for onshore elements of the world’s first demonstration CCS project.
Peterhead is in line for hundreds of construction jobs if the project proceeds.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey confirmed the Blue Toon as the location for the facility as part of a £100million investment in CCS technology.
He visited Peterhead Power Station to make the announcement alongside Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael.
Shell plans to pump harmful carbon dioxide emissions from the power plant 60 miles offshore to the depleted Goldeneye gas reservoir for storage 1.5 miles under the floor of the North Sea.
A study will assess if the plans are workable, but it is expected the new facility will capture, compress and shift a million tonnes of CO a year. It is hoped that it will help to clean up the UK’s power sector and become a key weapon in the battle against climate change, with the technology exported across the world.
Announcing its contract award, Technip said it already had a strong record of “deploying clean technologies and particularly first-of-a-kind technologies”.
It added: “The Feed scope includes a grassroots carbon capture and compression plant and modifications to an existing combined cycle gas turbine power plant.”
Technip’s operating centre in Milton Keynes, which executed a pre-Feed study for the Peterhead CCS project, will carry out the work.