Hewett Carbon Storage Project

The Hewett Storage project, part of the Bacton Thames Net Zero CCS initiative, is a UK offshore carbon capture and storage development led by Eni UK that repurposes the depleted Hewett gas field in the Southern North Sea as a permanent geological CO₂ storage site. The project is intended to provide large-scale offshore storage capacity for captured emissions from industrial and power sector sources across Southeast England and the Thames Estuary region. Eni UK has been awarded a Carbon Storage Licence by the UK North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), allowing the company to progress with appraisal and development activities. The project targets the reuse of existing subsurface knowledge and infrastructure associated with the Hewett field, which ceased gas production in 2021, helping to accelerate CCS deployment while reducing development risk. Hewett Storage is designed to scale to multi-million-tonne annual injection rates, with early development plans targeting approximately 6 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, expanding toward around 10 Mtpa as additional infrastructure and capture projects come online. This capacity supports the UK government’s national objective of reaching 20–30 Mtpa of CO₂ storage by 2030. As part of the development program, the project has entered the appraisal phase, including the drilling of a dedicated offshore appraisal well in 2025. This well is intended to confirm reservoir properties, pressure behavior, injectivity, and containment integrity, providing the technical basis required for full project sanction and long-term storage operations. Strategically, Hewett Storage serves as the offshore anchor for the Bacton Thames Net Zero collaboration, which aims to build an integrated CO₂ transport and storage network linking major emitters to permanent offshore storage. By leveraging existing offshore expertise and proximity to major industrial clusters, the project is positioned as a key component of the UK’s long-term CCS and industrial decarbonisation strategy, with first commercial injections targeted for the late 2020s.