It was recently announced that Petrofac has now begun a multi-million-dollar front-end-engineering design (FEED) project for Aramis. Aramis is a joint development between TotalEnergies, Shell, Energie Beheer Nederland (EBN) and Gausine and is the Netherland’s flagship carbon transport and storage system project.

The purpose behind Aramis is to capture carbon dioxide from industrial clusters, then to transport it to depleted offshore gas fields which are located under the North Sea. The captured Co2 will reach these fields after first being transported to the Port of Rotterdam, either through onshore pipelines or through being shipped there. Once the captured carbon has been temporarily stored at this site, it will then be moved by pipeline to storage facilities which are based offshore. The pipe that will transport all the captured carbon to this location has been specially designed to carry a maximum of 22 million tons of Co2 per year. On arrival at the offshore locations, the Co2 will then be injected, via wells, into the depleted gas reservoirs which are three to four kilometers below the seabed.

In order to make their role in this project a success, Petrofac has decided to collaborate with their partners, such as Peritus International and Offshore Independents in the Netherlands. These two companies will offer very important skills which are a necessity for the project. Peritus International is executing the offshore trunkline design and Offshore Independents will complete the landfall design and offshore installation analysis. Altogether, the three companies will work together at Petrofac’s consulting hub in Woking, based in the United Kingdom, this is also where Peritus International is based.

Petrofac’s role in this project will be to design the onshore, landfall and offshore sections of the 32” Co2 trunkline. They will also be responsible for designing the offshore Co2 distribution hub platform, plus the pipeline which will be used to link the distribution hub to a nearby storage facility, along with the control and safety systems.

There are a couple of aims accompanying this project, the first being focused on the new project having the ability to provide a route to decarbonise hard-to-abate industries throughout the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The second benefit of this project is the drive it provides to achieving the European Union’s decarbonisation aim. These targets were recently announced during the European Green Deal and the Dutch Climate Agreement.

John Pearson, Chief Operating Officer, Energy Transition Projects, Petrofac, commented, “We have a growing track record in supporting our clients in defining the infrastructure for developments across the CCS value chain - from the capture of emissions at source to the infrastructure required to transport and permanently store it. The Aramis project will be vital to the European Union reaching the goals outlined in the European Green Deal, and we are proud to be deploying our skills and experience in support.”