Dubai-headquartered engineering and services company Kent has won a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract with EnEarth, a subsidiary of the UK-based oil & gas company Energean, for a CO2 storage project in Greece.
The Prinos CO2 storage project, the first of its kind in the Mediterranean that has secured environmental and storage permits, includes a facility that will receive and process up to 2.8 million tons of liquid CO2 per annum (MTPA) by 2029.
The CO2 will be shipped from remote emitters via marine carriers to a new marine terminal at the onshore Sigma plant near Kavala, where it will be temporarily stored before being conditioned, pumped and transported through a new subsea pipeline to a standalone CO2 injection and water production (COIWP) platform within the existing Prinos complex.
Kent will develop the FEED for the new CO2 handling and storage facility, which will receive, store, transport, and inject CO2 into the Prinos aquifer underlying the existing reservoir. This FEED phase will define the technical scope and execution strategy for the project.
The CO2 storage project has been included in the European Union’s list of Projects of Common Interest (PCIs)
“Prinos represents one of Europe’s most strategically important carbon storage developments, and this FEED award marks a meaningful step toward enabling large-scale industrial decarbonisation in Greece and across the EU,” said Paul Wetton, Vice President UK Engineering Services at Kent.
“Kent brings deep experience in complex low-carbon projects globally, and we are committed to supporting EnEarth in designing Greece’s first dedicated CO2 storage site. EnEarth’s leadership in advancing thies project creates a strong basis for collaboration, and we look forward to working together to help bring Prinos into its next phase.”
To remind, Prinos is the only producing oil & gas field in Greece, discovered in 1974 and started producing in 1981. EnEarth is now working towards repurposing the facilities from an oil-producing asset to a carbon storage site.
The facility has been identified as “the only suitable site” in Greece to store carbon in the near future. An exploration permit for CO2 storage in the Prinos field was awarded in September 2023.
In June 2024, EnEarth submitted a formal application to the Hellenic Hydrocarbons and Energy Resources Management Company (EDEYEP) for a CO2 storage license.
The project will be developed in two phases. The first phase is focused on re-purposing existing infrastructure and rapidly achieving an injection capacity of 1 MtCO2/year, with the facility to be able to receive CO2 in compressed form in 2026-2027, while the second phase is designed to accommodate an injection capacity in the range of 2.8 MtCO2/year of liquid CO2 by 2029-2030 for approximately 20 years.
According to the UK firm, the project aligns with and is an integral part of the Mediterranean CCS Strategic Plan developed by France, Italy, and Greece, aiming to create the first industrial/commercial-scale CO2 storage hub in the Southeast Mediterranean.