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3 hours ago 2 min read
One of the world’s largest pipelay vessels, Saipem’s Castorone, has arrived in the Southern North Sea, to work on the Northern Endurance Partnership’s (NEP) carbon capture project.
NEP is developing the transportation and storage infrastructure at the heart of the East Coast Cluster, creating the pathway for captured CO₂ emissions from industry to be transported and permanently stored beneath the North Sea.
The 325-metre Castorone will lay a 136km pipeline that will connect industry on Teesside with NEP’s Endurance storage site, one of the UK’s most important carbon storage assets.
Once complete, the pipeline will transport and permanently store millions of tonnes of captured CO₂ deep beneath the seabed.
Underwater technology specialist Sonardyne will also deploy their environmental monitoring landers at key seabed locations in the project area.
These autonomous devices will continuously monitor the surrounding marine environment, from currents to small changes in water chemistry, providing valuable data to help verify safe CO₂ storage at the site.
Rich Denny, Managing Director at NEP, said the vessel’s arrival follows line pipe into the Port of Hartlepool.
“This is more than an engineering milestone,” he said. “It is a significant moment for the East Coast Cluster, for industrial decarbonisation and for the UK’s journey to net zero.”
Maritime infrastructure firm Jan De Nul recently announced it will by installing rock over the CO2 pipeline as part of NEP’s project.
