Kent: ‘US Better Placed’ Than Rest of the World for CCS

Integrated petrochemicals major Ineos awarded a contract in November to engineering and construction firm Kent for structural analysis and modeling on two North Sea oil platforms.

Kent is already working on several separate carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) projects, including the Viking development of a North Sea sequestration facility off the northeast coast of England, and the Baab North project in the United Arab Emirates incorporating CO₂ injection as part of primary production.

“The U.S. is probably better placed than the rest of the world for CO₂ transport and sequestration,” said John Kent, chief energy transformation officer and part of the executive team at Kent. “There is some network backbone, but the first and last miles must be built. Those are connections of course, but notably also removing impurities, drying, and compression to dense phase where necessary.”

Kent noted a pattern for most of CCS projects on which the company has worked on the initial stages.

“The thinking is that CO₂ is just another molecule and the infrastructure is very similar,” he said. “But that service is not paid at the meter. The cash curve for CO₂ midstream is very different from that of oil and gas. There is also a different risk-management element to supercritical gas in everything from compression to flange and valve management.”

Given its growing portfolio in carbon management, Kent established a sustainability council within the organization, managed by Emma Scott, vice president of sustainability. She emphasized that the work of her group is cross-functional through the company and its projects. It is an essential element of project design and completion for clients, an objective for operations within Kent, and also a growth strategy for the firm.

“By 2027, about a third of our revenue is expected to come from projects in low-carbon or sustainability,” Scott said. “It’s still early days. I am encouraging our people to find opportunities to share best practices among themselves. For our clients, we are working to embed sustainability in existing projects, and to have the principles part of new projects from the beginning.”