Bahrain is planning a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project worth around $4bn, according to Mark Thompson, the chief executive of Bahrain’s state energy conglomerate Nogaholding.

The project is expected to be able to sequester between 10 and 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for at least 50 years.

In an interview with MEED, Thompson said: “The project is in the range of $4bn or so.

“The good thing is that it is all onshore. 10-12 million tonnes of emissions are all within a seven-kilometre radius and the field where it will be stored is 10km away.”

Under current plans, the carbon dioxide emissions will be sequestered in a large gas reservoir forming part of the Bahrain Field, also known as the Awali Field.

The reservoir is big enough to sequester more than 550,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to Thompson.

“I have the space there,” he said. “The challenge is the technology and the cost.

“This is a very expensive project. We are looking for economies of scale and how we might stage it in a way that makes sense.”

The CCS project is bigger than any other project of its kind that has been announced, according to Thompson.

“We completed a very early feasibility study last year, in 2022,” he said. “We’ve subsequently engaged with experts in CCS and we expect that [second] study to be done by mid-2023.”

The project's front-end engineering and design (feed) is expected to start before the end of this year, according to Thompson.

Aramco carbon capture project

In February, MEED reported that Saudi Aramco is making progress with a project to develop a carbon capture and storage infrastructure in Saudi Arabia that will tap carbon dioxide discharge from its gas processing plants.

Aramco is expected to issue the main tender for the Accelerated Carbon Capture & Sequestration (ACCS) project to contractors in April. It issued a solicitation of interest (SoI) document for the project in January.

The Saudi energy giant plans to develop the project in a joint venture and has brought on board US oil field services provider SLB (formerly Schlumberger) and Germany-headquartered Linde, the world’s largest industrial gas producer, as partners.

The ACCS project aims to capture carbon dioxide from Aramco’s northern gas plants of Wasit, Fadhili and Khursaniyah, as well as from the operations of its subsidiary Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) and Saudi industrial gases provider Air Products Qudra.

UK-headquartered Wood Group has performed the feed work on the planned project.