Worley wins pre-FEED contract for Dutch North Sea CCS project
Australian engineering group Worley has been hired by Petrogas to design a major Dutch carbon storage project that repurposes depleted oil fields to meet strict EU climate targets.
Australian engineering firm Worley has secured a contract from Petrogas E&P Netherlands to deliver the pre-front-end engineering design (pre-FEED) for the Abeona carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the Dutch North Sea. The study will refine the development concept, establish cost estimates and reduce execution risks ahead of the final design phase. Worley’s work will integrate pipeline and facility systems to ensure a coordinated transition into the subsequent engineering stage.
The project’s financial viability relies heavily on transforming existing depleted oil infrastructure into carbon storage assets rather than building from scratch. Abeona CCS plans to redevelop the exhausted Helm and Helder offshore fields into permanent CO2 vaults. Central to this strategy is the proposed repurposing of a temporarily decommissioned 20-inch oil pipeline to transport captured carbon from the Port of Amsterdam directly to the offshore storage sites.
That transport concept recently cleared a significant technical hurdle after Bureau Veritas completed an 18-month assessment confirming the existing pipeline to the EVOS terminal can be adapted for CO2 transport. Aleid de Savornin Lohman, Project Director at Abeona CCS, said: “Independent technical assessments such as this help us make well-informed decisions during the development of the Abeona CCS project. This assessment provides an important technical basis for one of the transport concepts currently under public consultation and shows how existing infrastructure may contribute to the future Dutch CCS system.”
Abeona is targeting a start-up in late 2030 with an initial short-term storage capacity of 30 million tons of CO2, scalable to a maximum of 50 million tons. To contextualize the scale, that maximum capacity equates to the annual emissions of 1.5 to 2.5 million households. The facility is designed to provide a decarbonization pathway for hard-to-abate industrial emitters concentrated in the North Sea Canal Area.
The initiative fits neatly within regulatory frameworks driving European capital toward carbon storage. The European Net-Zero Industry Act sets a target of 50 million tons of CO2 storage per year by 2030, a figure Abeona is specifically designed to support. For Worley, the mandate builds on recent energy transition partnerships, including a strategic memorandum of understanding with Baker Hughes focused on LNG solutions.
