North Sea regulator publishes operational guidance for carbon storage projects
The North Sea Transition Authority published three new sets of operational guidance for carbon storage licensees, in a move intended to save developers time and administrative resources and to standardise how carbon capture and storage projects are delivered across the UK Continental Shelf.
The documents set out the regulator’s expectations for the scope and content of three plans that every developer must submit under a Carbon Dioxide Storage Permit: Storage Site Management Plans, Commissioning Plans, and Metering and Measurement Plans. Together they clarify the operational requirements projects must satisfy on the path to first injection of carbon dioxide, covering the safe, effective and transparent management of storage sites, the commissioning of transport and injection infrastructure, and the accurate measurement of gas volumes and composition entering storage reservoirs.
The NSTA said the guidance was road-tested with industry participants before publication to ensure it is practical and aligned with commercial realities. By defining a clear and consistent framework from the outset, the regulator aims to remove common bottlenecks in the approvals process and give operators a more efficient route to safely starting injection operations.
The publications will be of immediate relevance to the UK’s most advanced carbon storage developments. These include the Track 1 projects — the Endurance store off Teesside, which received its storage permit in December 2024 and could hold up to 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and HyNet in Liverpool Bay, which received three permits in April 2025 with similar capacity over 25 years — as well as the Track 2 schemes Acorn in Scotland and Viking in the Humber, and any new licensees entering the sector.
The guidance lands at a busy moment for UK carbon storage regulation. The NSTA’s second carbon storage licensing round, which offered 14 areas off Scotland and England with potential additional capacity of around 2 billion tonnes, closed to applications on 24 March 2026, and the regulator expects to award licences in early 2027. The UK government has committed up to £21.7 billion to its first CCS clusters, and the Climate Change Committee has concluded there is no viable route to net zero by 2050 for the UK without carbon storage. The new documents join a growing suite of NSTA operational toolkits, following earlier guidance on carbon dioxide measurement for storage permit applications and on monitoring the movement and containment of injected carbon dioxide.
