The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) has now issued regulations covering safety and the working environment when transporting and injecting CO₂ on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS).
Areas of application for these regulations will include the government’s full-scale demonstration project for carbon capture, transport and storage (CCS) in geological formations beneath the North Sea.
The PSA has been assigned the regulatory authority for safety and the working environment when transporting and injecting CO₂, and issued the new regulations to cover this area in February 2020.
The new regulations apply to transport and injection of CO₂ in geological formations on the NCS, and apply to equipment and systems required for operation and maintenance of pipelines as well as for monitoring injection wells and emergency/safety systems associated with pipelines and wells.
Upstream, their application is delimitated by the equipment needed for injection and down to the outlet of the CO₂ well’s injection pipeline.
Parts of the government’s demonstration project for CO₂ handling , which embraces a full-scale system for carbon capture, transport, reception and permanent storage, will be among the areas subject to the regulations.
Elements in a large-scale CO₂ system of this kind include a carbon capture facility with storage tanks, transport by sea, a reception facility and intermediate storage, pipeline transport to the North Sea and permanent storage in a reservoir beneath the seabed.
The Northern Lights consortium (Equinor, Norske Shell and Total) will be responsible for the transport and storage section of the demonstration project.
The regulations on safety and the working environment when transporting and injecting CO2 on the continental shelf, and the associated guidelines, are currently being translated into English. These translations will be published at psa.no as soon as they are ready.
Source: PSA