ORLEN, in partnership with Norway’s Equinor – one of Europe’s largest energy companies – will explore opportunities within Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) technology. The management boards of both companies have just signed a collaboration agreement, its scope covering the transport and storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in Poland. The solution will reduce CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere, supporting the decarbonization of industry.
Under the agreement, ORLEN and Equinor will jointly identify potential CO₂ storage sites, considering both land-based locations and areas within the Polish section of the Baltic Sea. In the next step, the partners will assess the feasibility of joint projects based on the identified storage locations in Poland.
“Our collaboration with Equinor marks a major milestone in advancing the ORLEN Group’s strategic goals. We are joining forces with an experienced and driven partner to develop unique know-how in the CCS technology. Building on this knowledge, we aim to establish a new, forward-looking business area that will boost our decarbonisation potential. At the same time, the initiative has the potential to serve as a catalyst giving rise to an entire ecosystem of businesses that could grow, create value, and generate new jobs. This is how we fulfil our role as the energy transition leader,” says Wiesław Prugar, Member of the ORLEN Management Board, Upstream.
“Building on an already well-established energy partnership, this agreement mark another step in our collaboration with Orlen. Both companies are committed to delivering energy security while progressing low carbon solutions and development of renewable energy. We look forward to working together with Orlen to identify potential CO₂ storage opportunities in Poland where the two companies could complement each other’s strengths”, says Irene Rummelhoff, EVP Marketing, Midstream and Processing in Equinor.
Equinor is among the world leaders in Carbon Capture and Storage. It began storing CO₂ in the offshore Sleipner field back in 1996. Today, the company is involved in several large-scale CCS initiatives across North-West Europe and the United States. Among others, Equinor holds an interest in Northern Lights, the first cross-border CCS initiative that provides CO₂ storage as a service. In September 2024, Northern lights stood ready to receive CO₂, and the first customer is expected to deliver CO₂ mid-2025. Northern Lights phase 1 offers an injection capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. In addition, Equinor holds several storage licenses on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, Denmark, UK, and US. Last year, together with their partners TotalEnergies and BP, they made the final investment decision (FID) on Northern Endurance Partnership, a CO₂ transport and storage solution, and Net Zero Teesside, a gas fired power plant with post-combustion carbon capture.
As part of its new strategy, ORLEN has committed to achieving an annual carbon capture, transport, and storage capacity of 4 million tonnes by 2035. A portion of this capacity would be allocated to advancing the ORLEN Group’s net zero goal, mainly for its petrochemical and refining assets, while the remainder would be offered as a service to other firms.
ORLEN’s plans for CCS, and its resulting collaboration with the Norwegian partner, reflect the Company’s ambitious decarbonisation goals and align with new European regulations. In June 2024, the EU’s Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) came into force, aimed at enhancing the competitive strength of European companies in zero-emission technologies and improving access to such solutions. Among other provisions, NZIA sets specific targets for CCS capacity development, mandating that the EU achieve an annual CO₂ injection capacity of 50 million tonnes by 2030. The responsibility for meeting this target falls on companies engaged in oil and gas extraction within the EU, including ORLEN.
According to NZIA’s framework, CCS is expected to enable the decarbonisation of industries with hard-to-abate CO2 emissions due to technological constraints, especially cement, steel and chemicals. For these sectors, the only viable solution to prevent CO₂ emissions from being released into the atmosphere is to capture the carbon, transport it to dedicated storage sites, and inject it into deep geological formations. Thanks to CCS, companies in hard-to-abate industries would be able to continue their operations within the EU despite increasingly stringent carbon reduction targets.