Energy Transition

Sonardyne to monitor North Sea CCS storage site

June 4, 2025

Sonardyne will deliver baseline environmental monitoring services for the UK’s first offshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) site.

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Sonardyne

NEP's East Coast Cluster map — The Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) is developing onshore and offshore infrastructure needed to transport CO2 from carbon capture projects across Teesside and the Humber – collectively known as the East Coast Cluster - to secure storage under the North Sea.

The Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) of bp, Equinor and TotalEnergies has appointed Sonardyne to perform baseline environmental monitoring services for their carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in northeast England.

NEP is developing the onshore and offshore infrastructure to transport CO₂ captured from industrial emitters across Teesside and the east coast Humber region to the south—collectively known as the East Coast Cluster—for storage in a saline aquifer in the North Sea.

The offshore storage site is 145 km from the Teesside coast.

Sonardyne seabed lander — Sonardyne has been awarded a contract for seabed monitoring landers and associated services for the Northern Endurance Partnership project.

Sonardyne will provide environmental monitoring via seabed landers at various locations above and around the subsurface Endurance site.

Monitoring of the offshore site will start next summer, with the aim being to deliver baseline data over a two-year period before transportation and storage of captured CO₂ begins.

The seabed landers will be equipped with Sonardyne’s Edge data processing application, power management and acoustic through-water communications for long-term, remote battery-operated deployments.

Each lander will also carry Sonardyne’s Origin 600 ADCP, Wavefront’s passive sonar array and other third-party sensors to enable detection of small changes in water chemistry across a wide area.

The data will be accessible without having to retrieve the landers, using wireless subsea acoustic communication.

As Sonardyne noted, monitoring is critical for offshore CCS developments to confirm the CO₂ is being safely contained within the reservoir.

Late last month, Noble reported that it signed a contract with bp for the Noble Innovator to drill six firm wells for the NEP project in the North Sea. The contract is expected to start in third-quarter 2026 and contains an option for two additional wells.

Also announced last month, Worley Consulting has been chosen to continue delivering Lender’s Technical Advisor services for NEP and Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power). NZT Power says it aims to become the world’s first gas-fired power station with CCS.