An abandoned offshore gas production platform sounds like the perfect place for a Bond villain to set up home but the Goldeneye rig could soon be licensed to thrill the North Sea oil and gas industry.

The facility ceased production in 2011 — seven years after it first started producing gas — and could soon get a new lease of life as part of a world-leading project in carbon capture and storage.

Shell's proposed carbon capture project in Peterhead could be a world first and the energy giant says the pioneering project must be given the go ahead if the UK is to have any hope of reducing its carbon footprint.

At stake are billions of pounds of funding, major climate change technology and hundreds of jobs.

Peterhead Power Station, one of two projects in the running to be included in the project, could be used to capture harmful carbon dioxide that would normally enter the atmosphere, which would then be compressed and fed down a pipeline more than 62 miles offshore to the Goldeneye platform.

Once there it would be stored in depleted gas wells under the sea.

The project, which is backed by Shell and SSE, is one of two finalists in a UK government competition to win funding worth £1bn to develop the technology.

A final decision on which scheme the government will support, if any, will be made next year.

Source: news.stv.tv

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