The Northern Lights project to disclose its data

The FINANCIAL — Equinor is developing the Northern Lights project with Shell and Total as equal partners. Willing to share knowledge in a transparent manner the Northern Lights projects partners have decided to give open access to 31/5-7 Eos well data and make such data available for download.

“The Northern Lights project believes data sharing can play an important role in building trust in the technology as well as unlocking value and innovation potential in the CCS industry”, says Sverre Overå, project director.

“Disclosing the Northern Lights dataset is in line with our focus on external collaboration and more open innovation. We believe open innovation will contribute to new ideas and new digital solutions enabling acceleration of decarbonisation of the world’s energy systems. We encourage data sharing to support partners, suppliers and academia with the latest data and developments in the industry”, says Torbjørn Folgerø, chief digital officer at Equinor.

The data acquired from drilling well 31/5-7 confirmed a suitable reservoir for the storage of CO₂.

The gathered data will be made available via Equinor’s OMNIA platform. The released data discloses relevant subsurface data including well log data, core data and well test data. They can be used by interested parties for evaluation and research for the benefit of the emerging CCS business.

The Norwegian Full-Scale CCS project “Langskip” is the first industry scale project for capture and storage of CO₂ on the Norwegian continental shelf.

Exploitation license EL001 for CO₂ storage, was awarded to the partners in January 2019. The 31/5-7 confirmation well (Eos) within EL001 licence was drilled and tested from 2nd December 2019 to 7th March 2020.

The Eos well targeted the Dunlin Group Geological formation as the primary storage, where the sandstone-bearing Cook and Johansen formations both can serve as storage units for the injected CO₂.

The cap rock consists of impermeable claystones called Drake Formation, which prevents the CO₂ from migrating out of the Dunlin Group.