November saw completion of drilling under the Beerkanaal in Rotterdam’s Europoort. The Beerkanaal crossing marks the longest and deepest drilling of the Porthos project. The horizontal directional drilling is 1445 m long and has a depth of 50 metres. It connects both sides of the Beerkanaal and is regarded as a significant milestone for the Porthos project. Two drilling rigs were used to drill towards each other from the two banks. After the successful meeting of the drills, reaming was started, increasing the borehole diameter to 1.4 m, to allow the CO2 pipe (pictured) to be inserted (photo: Porthos)

Construction work on the Porthos carbon dioxide transport and storage system in the port area of Rotterdam is well underway. It is the first CO2 transport and storage project of this scale to be realised in the European Union and lays the foundations for future CCS projects in north-west Europe.

Porthos will provide the infrastructure to transport carbon dioxide from emitters in the port of Rotterdam to depleted gas fields under the North Sea.

Porthos customers Shell, ExxonMobil, Air Liquide and Air Products will connect to an open-access 30 km long carbon dioxide collector pipeline running through the Rotterdam port area.

The CO2 will be transported via an offshore pipeline to an existing platform in the North Sea, approximately 20 km off the coast. From this platform, the carbon dioxide will be pumped into the depleted gas fields. The depleted gas fields are located in a sealed reservoir of porous sandstone more than 3 km beneath the North Sea.

Route of the Porthos carbon dioxide collection pipeline (image: Porthos)

Porthos has been recognised by the European Union as a project of common interest and has been awarded €102 million from the Connecting Europe Facility.

Construction of the Porthos onshore open access pipeline marks the start of the development of a future carbon dioxide network in north west Europe, say its developers. 

As well as the pipeline, construction of the Maasvlakte compressor station and cooling water pumping station has also started. Three compressors will bring the CO2 to a maximum pressure of 130 bar, for subsequent transfer to the offshore platform. Construction of the offshore pipeline and work on the platform is scheduled to start in 2025. Porthos is expected to be operational in 2026.

While Porthos will transport 2.5 million tonnes per year, the onshore Porthos pipeline has a capacity of 10 million tonnes per year, enabling it to accommodate future projects such as Aramis.

The projects in Rotterdam can be seen as the beginning of a CCS chain that could develop into an international CCS network with connections to the Delta Rhine Corridor project and other links.