April 2025, Vol. 252, No. 4
Features
North Sea Pipeline Activity Accelerating Amid Jump in Demand
By Eugene Gerdin, International Correspondent
(P&GJ) — The volume of pipeline activity in the North Sea region — covering Denmark, the Netherlands, the southern part of Norway, northwestern regions of Germany and some parts of Sweden, Belgium and France — is accelerating this year, being mainly driven by the ever-growing energy demand, particularly with hydrogen.
Historically, the North Sea has been one of the busiest and most strategic waters in the world. The area is home to all kinds of vital infrastructure, such as wind farms, submarine cables and oil and gas installations — all of which are of critical importance to Europe’s energy supply and communication.
The North Sea is primarily known for its oil reserves and the existing pipeline infrastructure to deal with them. According to data of NRK — the Norwegian government-influenced radio and television public broadcasting company — currently there are 26,720 miles (43,000 km) of pipelines and almost 27,000 wells in the North Sea.
During the 1970s and 1980s, a large number of major oil fields were discovered and brought into production. Some of the biggest fields are Brent, Forties and Ninian in the U.K. sector and Statfjord and Oseberg in the Norwegian sector.
Still, in contrast to some previous years, when the majority of activity in the region was focused on the development of its oil pipeline infrastructure, this time the biggest hopes are related to hydrogen. This is mainly due to Europe’s ongoing transition to a low-carbon economy and all the environmental commitments associated with it.
Probably the biggest of them were provided by Germany — the largest economy of the North Sea region and the entire European continent. As the German economy rapidly switches to hydrogen, the demand for it from the country’s powerful industrial sector is steadily growing.
That leads to the numerous calls by German businesses on the national government to create conditions for the establishment of reliable infrastructure that will ensure its hydrogen transportations within the country and beyond. For German business, the most convenient option is to receive the needed volumes of hydrogen for its needs via pipelines.
As the demand for hydrogen in Germany grows steadily, it stimulates more active building of hydrogen pipeline infrastructure in the German North Sea. Among the primary supporters and initiators of these plans are industrial and chemical companies from some central and western (the most economically developed) provinces of the country.
Most of them want to reduce their climate footprint by transporting greenhouse gases to the German coast and are calling for the building of an extensive pipeline system for this purpose.
Perhaps one of the largest of such projects is currently implemented in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony — the second-largest state by land area in Germany — where the construction of a hydrogen pipeline through the North Sea with a total length of more than 248 miles (400 km) is currently ongoing.
Under the terms of the project, known as Aquaductus, the state government is providing $64.9 million (60 million euros) for a 62-mi (100-km) section of the pipeline on land, while the federal government is providing additional funding of about $152 million (140 million euros) on the offshore sector of the pipeline.
According to the German Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) business publication, which cites local network operators Gascade and Fluxys, the pipeline will connect wind farms in the German Bight (the southeastern bight of the North Sea, bounded by the Netherlands and Germany to the south and Denmark and Germany to the east) in a first expansion phase and transport gas to the coast from 2030. The landing point of the pipeline will be near Wilhelmshaven. The hydrogen will be produced at sea, using so-called electrolyzers.
According to Lower Saxony’s Energy Minister Christian Meyer, this will be a green beacon for a climate-neutral energy supply at sea. He also added that, in the future, green hydrogen will be produced from surplus wind power and make the industry more independent of carbon as well as reduce grid expansion costs of $32.4 billion (30 billion euros).
Currently Aquaductus is the only hydrogen pipeline planned for the German North Sea. The newly built pipeline is one of a total 12 major projects to develop a hydrogen economy in Germany, with planned funding of $2.6 billion (2.47 billion euros). In addition to pipelines, this also includes the conversion of storage facilities and the construction of production plants.
In the meantime, another hydrogen pipeline project in the North Sea has since been stopped. In 2023, RWE and the Norwegian energy company Equinor announced that they wanted to work together to import hydrogen to Germany.
Equinor examined the possibility of building a new pipeline through the North Sea, with Wilhelmshaven as a possible landing point. Then, in autumn 2024, Equinor announced that it suspended the project, due to its high cost and insufficient demand.
This is not the only major regional project, as many regional countries bordering the North Sea try to leverage the serious benefits associated with an ongoing hydrogen boom in Germany.
For example, Denmark is using its land border with Germany for an onshore pipeline. The up to 280-miles (450-km) Danish pipeline, Danish Backbone West, is scheduled to run from the northern Danish underground storage facility Lille Torup to the greater Hamburg area as early as 2028. According to a feasibility study, the potential for hydrogen export is around 15 terawatt hours in 2030 and is expected to rise to 79 terawatt hours by 2050.
The hydrogen network, Danish Backbone West, is planned by the Danish transmission system operator Energinet and is in an exploratory phase with potential suppliers and customers. Final investment decision (FID) is expected to be reached in the coming months.
Recently, in Scotland, the local The Net Zero Technology Center has confirmed the technical feasibility of the “Hydrogen Backbone Link,” with an overall cost of $3.2 billion (€3 billion). The project is part of ambitious plans by the Scottish government for its hydrogen exports. As part of the existing Hydrogen Action Plan, the government wants to build capacity for about 25 gigawatts for low-emission hydrogen production by 2045. Of this, 94 terawatt hours of green hydrogen will be exported, primarily via pipelines.
Despite the serious existing advantages of these projects, most analysts consider the construction of such hydrogen pipeline infrastructure to be very expensive for most North Sea states. Depending on the route, the cost of such pipelines may vary in the range of $1.2-1.7 billion (1.1 billion-1.57 billion euros), which may lead to delays in implementation of certain projects.
As for Germany, the federal government is also pushing ahead with plans to allow storage of CO2 in the North Sea.
“For industrial sectors such as the cement industry, there is no alternative to CO2 storage,” Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck said earlier in the Bundestag.
The plans are also controversial, with environmental associations warning against allowing large-scale underground storage of climate-damaging CO2 in Germany.
In addition, there are plans by major local players for more active development of regional oil reserves, along with infrastructure for their transportation.
For example, Europe’s second largest gas producer, Equinor, has awarded Subsea7 a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for the Fram Sør development, which consists of four fields in the Norwegian North Sea. Potential subsea infrastructure installation for this project, including pipelines, is scheduled for between 2026-2028.
The Fram Sør area is located 6.2–18.6 miles (10–30 km) north of the Equinor-operated Troll C platform and about 43 miles (70 km) northwest of Bergen. The development will be connected to the existing Fram and Troll C infrastructure.
In general, Norway has some of the most developed pipeline infrastructure among the North Sea states. Norway’s first large pipelines were laid early in the 1970s, and since then, the Norwegian gas transport system has been developed to meet ever-expanding domestic needs.
According to official data of the Norwegian government, the total length of the Norwegian gas pipeline network is about 5,470 miles (8,800 km), the transport capacity of the Norwegian pipeline network is currently about 120 billion Sm3 dry gas per year. Oil transport infrastructure on the Norwegian shelf is divided into four different systems. Oil pipelines from fields in the North Sea run to the Norwegian terminals Sture, Mongstad and Kårstø and to Teesside in the U.K.
In the meantime, Subsea7 is part of another important investment project in the region, and the company has contracted Corinth Pipeworks to manufacture steel pipes for two field developments in the North Sea. The Bestla project is a 13-km, two-well subsea tieback to the Brage field platform to the north. Under the terms of the agreement, Corinth will supply 7.78 miles (12.5 km) of 14-inch, HFW steel pipes.
In the U.K. central North Sea, the Bittern project calls for the manufacture of about 13.7inches (22 km) of HFW steel pipes for a 12-inch water injection pipeline, 120 miles (190 km) east of Aberdeen.
At the same time, in spite of existing plans for acceleration in both production and transportation of hydrocarbons in the region, there is still the issue of dealing with large volumes of abandoned industry infrastructure. According to some Norwegian media reports, at present, 10% of all platforms, 20% of pipelines and 70% of wells in the North Sea are out of service and not used.
This has sparked serious concerns from local environmentalists and representatives of the local public, which have tried to direct the attention of regional governments and investors to the problem of abandoned infrastructure.
Security issues are also important. Since the explosions at the Nord Stream pipelines, the threat to underwater infrastructure has become clear. This is reinforced by recent incidents and diversions with seabed infrastructure in the Baltics. In order to deal with the ever-growing threat, six countries bordering the North Sea have recently agreed on an agreement of cooperation, to protect underwater infrastructure.
Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands also signed a joint declaration. The aim is to enable a better exchange of information, in order to prevent possible attacks, among other things.
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