If carbon capture technology is ever to be useful, there have to be places to store the captured carbon. One place is deep in the earth, in abandoned oil wells. We’re seeing somewhat more interest in carbon capture in maritime, and also in manufacturing areas. Maritime is more of an issue, because the captured carbon must be stored onboard, and offloaded periodically.
One option is to sell the compressed cold carbon to industrial users. But there’s not enough demand if most ships were producing captured carbon. Already, onshore carbon capture can supply a good deal of the commercial need for CO2.
Reuse of carbon in this way is simply circular; it does not actually remove carbon from the natural environment, it simply recycles it. And many onshore facilities like power plants and cement processes could rather easily capture their carbon emissions.
All this carbon can’t simply be recycled; there must be a place to put it. It’s odd that there has not been more investment in places to sequester the captured carbon.
That’s why the INEOS announcement in the article below is interesting. INEOS is an international chemical company with headquarters in many countries. (They also co-own and operate Manchester United, a Premier League football club).
They have designed a complete system to sequester the carbon in the North Sea, called Greensand. The full value chain will be established. The captured CO2 will come from Danish biomethane plants.
Once captured, CO2 is liquefied, delivered by truck to a dedicated CO2 terminal at Port Esbjerg, shipped aboard Carbon Destroyer 1, the EU’s first purpose-built CO2 carrier, and injected into the Nini West reservoir in the Danish part of the North Sea, a depleted oil field some 250 km offshore, approximately 1,800 m beneath the seabed.
Currently the project can store 400000 tonnes annually, but plans to expand to between 4 and 8 million tonnes annually.
There are still institutional barriers limiting capture of CO2 at scale — regulations, infrastructure, and investment. Since we’re not going green on energy anytime soon, it’s time to start investing big time in carbon capture — technology and infrastructure.
Bojan Lepic September 18, 2026
https://splash247.com/ineos-opens-eus-first-full-scale-offshore-ccs-project
