Germany-headquartered Linde Engineering has announced winning a contract to provide carbon capture technology for Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s (Adnoc) estimated $17bn Hail and Ghasha sour gas field development project.

The deal has been awarded to Linde as a sub-contract by NextChem, a subsidiary of Italy-based Maire, the main contractor performing engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) works on the $8.74bn onshore package of the Hail and Ghasha project.

In June, Maire appointed NextChem as the technology design integrator to develop the process design package (PDP) for the hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery unit of the Hail and Ghasha onshore package.

As part of its contract, Linde will provide its adsorption-based carbon capture technology Hisorp CC, plus the core units, to capture and purify CO2 for sequestration (CCS). The CO2 recovery facility will have a total capacity to capture and store 1.5 million tonnes a year of emissions from the Hail and Ghasha scheme.

Linde’s Hisorp CC is an electrically-driven technology that can power the carbon capture process with renewable energy. It combines pressure swing adsorption with cryogenic separation and compression to achieve CO2 capture rates of over 99%. The process does not require steam for regeneration, so it does not increase the carbon footprint.

Hail and Ghasha scheme

The Ghasha concession consists of the Hail and Ghasha fields, along with the Hair Dalma, Satah, Bu Haseer, Nasr, Sarb, Shuwaihat and Mubarraz fields.

Adnoc Group owns and operates the Ghasha concession, holding the majority 55% stake. The other stakeholders in the asset are Italian energy major Eni with a 25% stake, Thailand’s PTTEP Holding with 10% and Austria’s OMV and Russia’s Lukoil with 5% interests each.

Adnoc expects total gas production from the concession to ramp up to more than 1.5 billion cubic feet a day (cf/d) before the end of the decade. This target will mainly be achieved through the Hail and Ghasha sour gas development project.

In October last year, Adnoc and its partners awarded $16.94bn of EPC contracts for its Hail and Ghasha project – the biggest capital expenditure made by the Abu Dhabi energy company on a single project in its history.

While Adnoc awarded the onshore EPC package to Tecnimont, the offshore EPC package was awarded to a consortium of Abu Dhabi’s NMDC Energy and Italian contractor Saipem.

The $8.2bn contract relates to EPC work on offshore facilities, including facilities on artificial islands and subsea pipelines.

Prior to reaching the final investment decision on the Hail and Ghasha project last year, the Ghasha concession partners, led by Adnoc, awarded two EPC contracts worth $1.46bn in November 2021 to execute offshore and onshore EPC works on the Dalma gas development project.