The incredible new £200m pipeline promising £4bn boost to UK economy
Once opened, the pipeline will transport carbon dioxide from industrial activities to be stored under the North Sea.
The UK government has approved plans for a £200 million onshore pipeline development off the Lincolnshire coast. Designed to support significant carbon capture initiatives, the Viking project means the construction of a new 55km (34 mile) onshore underground pipelines from Immingham, in the northeast of the county, to Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal.
Once built, the pipeline will carry dense-phase carbon dioxide, so called because it compresses the gas such that it has the density of a liquid, crucial to transportation. After reaching the gas terminal, the carbon dioxide will be transferred through an existing sub-sea tunnel offshore for long-term storage in the Viking gas fields, which are situated under the North Sea.
Depleted gas fields are used for storage, which would previously have been drilled for primary gas production but are now no longer economically viable. Gas is stored in these fields when demand is low and released when it increases again.
In Lincolnshire, these gas reservoirs as 2.7km (1.6 miles) beneath the seabed and 140km (87 miles) from the coast.
Approval of the project followed a consultation period in which the public, local councils and those bodies required by law to be consulted were invited to share their views.
The plan is led by Harbour Energy and is also backed by BP, part of a wider scheme to invest in carbon capture and storage, a process through which carbon dioxide is captured from industrial processes and prevented from entering the atmosphere.
As a result of this process, overall greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
This project is part of an initiative which will reportedly lead to £7 billion being invested into the Humber area by 2035.
Officials have projected the creation of 10,000 construction jobs as a result of the project, with an estimated £4 billion boost the economy over the next ten years.
The Viking fields are expected to offer a storage capacity of 300 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide with a target of annual transportation capability reaching 10 million tonnes by 2030.
That figure is the equivalent of almost 20% of annual UK car emissions, according to the project’s website.
