Permanent carbon storage is one of the tools needed to reduce the atmospheric content of the greenhouse gas that drives climate change. At the DTU Offshore research centre, they are currently investigating whether we can utilize the underground of the North Sea for carbon storage.
"The advantage of existing and decommissioned oil and gas fields is that the underground is already well-defined, because we have huge amounts of data on both the geological conditions and the installations out there. During the first ten years of the centre's existence, we have built up expert knowledge about how liquids, gases, and pressure behave in this area, and these things together are key to understanding carbon storage in the North Sea's subsurface," says Charlotte Nørgaard Larsen, Head of DTU Offshore's research into carbon storage.
DTU Offshore was originally established in 2014 under the name Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre. As the name suggests, research into the utilization of Danish oil and gas fields was the priority. In 2022, the organisation changed its name to DTU Offshore, Danish Offshore Technology Centre, to better reflect the breadth of the centre's focus, which today includes research into the offshore industry's environmental impact and offshore carbon storage.
Regarding the latter, researchers are investigating how we can optimize utilization of North Sea oil and gas fields for carbon storage and for developing technologies that can help solve some of the environmental problems that may arise in relation to this.
