Equinor Grants Open Access to Offshore CCS Project Data

Oil company Equinor, with partners Shell and Total, will grant open access to data from the 31/5-7 Eos offshore well drilled earlier this year as part of the Northern Lights carbon capture and storage project.

The Northern Lights is a project sanctioned in May 2020. It is planned to be developed in phases. Phase 1 includes the capacity to transport, injection, and storage of up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. Once the CO₂ is captured onshore by industrial CO₂-emitters, Northern lights will be responsible for transport by ships, injection, and permanent storage some 2,500 meters below the seabed.

The three companies in March completed the drilling of confirmation well 31/5-c7 Eos south of the Troll field in the North Sea. The purpose was to determine the suitability of the reservoir in the Johansen formation for CO₂ storage, as part of the Northern Lights project. The data acquired from drilling well 31/5-7 confirmed a suitable reservoir for the storage of CO2. 

It was determined that the cap rock consisted of impermeable claystone called Drake Formation, which prevents the CO2 from migrating out of the Dunlin Group.

Now, Equinor says that the project partners will disclose datasets from the confirmation well 31/5-7 Eos. Per the company, extensive amounts of data have been acquired through coring, logging, sampling, and a production test. Credit: Equinor

"Willing to share knowledge in a transparent manner the Northern Lights projects partners have decided to give open access to 31/5 Eos well data and make such data available for download," Equinor said in a statement.

"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 decarbonization 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, the chief digital officer at Equinor.

The gathered data will be made available via Equinor’s OMNIA platform. The released data disclose 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, Equinor said.

The dataset comprises approximately 850 files and more than 83 Gigabytes and can be accessed through the Equinor data portal.