Horisont Energi looking for new partners for Barents Sea CO2 exploration license as ORLEN withdraws

ORLEN Upstream Norway, part of Poland’s ORLEN Group and formerly known as PGNiG Upstream Norway (PUN), has decided to withdraw from the Polaris CO2 exploration license, the only CO2 storage located in the Barents Sea, with Horisont Energi now assessing the way forward for the project.

The Polaris license is located several hundred meters below the seabed in the Barents Sea, 140 kilometers off Hammerfest, Norway. The reservoir was planned as a key component for the planned Barents Blue ammonia plant, with captured CO2 from the sequestration of natural gas and production of blue ammonia set to be stored in the Polaris reservoir. In addition, the reservoir will be available for third-party storage.

The application for the exploration license was submitted in 2021, the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy announced the award of the license to a group consisting of Horisont Energi, Equinor and Vår Energi on April 5, 2022, and in June the same year, the storage license was formally approved.

Horisont Energi and PUN announced a sales purchase agreement on December 11, 2023, making PUN a license partner in the Polaris CO2 project. At the beginning of 2024, the Norwegian Ministry of Energy approved PUN as an operator and partner with Horisont Energi in the license.

The two companies each have a participating interest of 50% in the EXL003 CO2 license Polaris, which will provide CO2 storage for Horisont Energi and Fertiberia’s Barents Blue project as well as other CO2 customers.

However, a turn of events occurred as today, October 14, Horisont Energi announced it was assessing various options for moving the Polaris project forward since ORLEN Upstream Norway had informed it decided to withdraw from the license.

“Polaris has already documented its reservoir capacity and technical CO2 storage feasibility, establishing it as a technically mature project. Horisont Energi will now consider the options of how to bring the Polaris project forward as a competitive alternative for the Barents Blue Project,” said Co-CEOs Bjørgulf Haukelidsæter Eidesen and Leiv Kallestad.

Horisont Energi is in dialogue with the Norwegian Ministry of Energy and new potential license partners and is currently conducting a strategic review exploring options for the company going forward including its project portfolio in carbon transport and storage and clean ammonia.

On October 10 it was announced that the Barents Blue project is evaluating alternative CO2 storage options as part of the ongoing concept selection process. According to Horisont Energi, recent developments in the North Sea carbon storage landscape have introduced new alternatives, providing optionality for the Barents Blue project, with options that were not available when the project was initially launched.

Earlier this summer, PUN was in a group with Aker BP offered an exploration license for CO2 storage on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), with two also offered to Equinor and one to a group consisting of Vår Energi, OMV (Norge) and Lime Petroleum.

In September, the Norwegian Ministry of Energy revealed that Horisont Energi was one of six applicants in the run for three CO2 storage areas on the NCS as part of the seventh call for CO2 storage in the area.