Seabed monitoring is now in place for the UK’s first commercial scale offshore carbon storage project, taking data about the environment and seismic activity.
Six systems have been deployed to the seabed by Kraken robotics company Sonardyne, who aim to support a long-term measurement, monitoring and verification programme for offshore CO₂ storage.
The carbon storage project is part of the East Coast Cluster decarbonisation programme in Teesside and the Humber, situated about 1000m beneath the seabed.
Stephen Auld, Business Development Manager for Custom Projects at Sonardyne, said: “Confidence in offshore CO₂ storage starts with good data. By delivering and deploying these environmental and micro-seismic monitoring systems, and managing their ongoing operation and data retrieval, Sonardyne is supporting a key part of NEP’s MMV programme at Endurance.
“For offshore CO₂ storage, that continuity matters. Long-term assurance depends on reliable data gathered across the full storage lifecycle, not a single point-in-time measurement — a role that draws directly on our experience in seabed-resident monitoring, acoustic communications and offshore integrity monitoring.”
The OSPAR Commission has previously identified potential impacts from offshore infrastructure, including disturbance to burrowing species and localised impacts on marine organisms from construction and drilling activities, whilst the British Geological Survey stated that injecting large quantities of pressurised CO₂ into geological formations changes pressure underground, which can potentially reactivate existing geological faults and cause small induced earthquakes.
By monitoring environmental and seismic activity, its possible that these could be caught before they occur, or better risk management can be put in place to manage disturbances.
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