Sleipner

The Sleipner CCS Project is the world’s first commercial offshore carbon capture and storage operation, developed and operated by Equinor in the Norwegian North Sea. Since 1996, the project has captured CO₂ separated from natural gas produced at the Sleipner West gas field, where the raw gas contains elevated CO₂ levels that must be removed to meet sales specifications. Approximately 1 million tonnes of CO₂ per year is captured during gas processing and compressed offshore before being injected into the Utsira Formation, a deep saline aquifer located about 1,000 meters beneath the seabed. Sleipner is operated by Equinor on behalf of the Sleipner license partners and has stored more than 20 million tonnes of CO₂ since startup, demonstrating long-term safe geological storage at industrial scale. The project established key monitoring and verification practices, including seismic imaging and reservoir modeling, and has become a global reference case for offshore CCS deployment. Sleipner’s continuous operation has played a foundational role in proving the technical and regulatory feasibility of permanent CO₂ storage in saline formations and has directly informed later North Sea CCS hub developments.