SLB, Aker Close Carbon-Capture Technology Merger

ACC and SLB closed a previously announced joint venture to combine technology portfolios, expertise, and operations platforms to support increased carbon-capture adoption for large-scale industrial decarbonization. The new company will be headquartered in Oslo, Norway—SLB owns an 80% stake in the company while ACC ASA owns the remaining 20% stake.

“There is no credible pathway toward net zero without deploying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at scale,” said Gavin Rennick, President of SLB’s New Energy business. “In the next few decades, many industries that are crucial to our modern world must rapidly adopt CCS to decarbonize. Through the joint venture, we are excited to accelerate disruptive carbon capture technologies globally.”

The merged company includes ACC’s amine-based Advanced Carbon Capture portfolio, such as Just Catch and Big Catch modular plant technologies for medium- and large-scale facilities and Just Catch Offshore for offshore gas turbines. SLB contributes a portfolio of technology solutions, including non-aqueous solvent and emerging sorbent-based offerings. The company has seven technology installations underway with a total capacity to capture up to 1 million tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

Just Catch modular plant technology; Image Credits: ACC

“There’s no business as usual in the push toward net zero—we will accelerate decarbonization today and commercialize innovative technologies for the future,” said Egil Fagerland, Chief Executive Officer of the SLB–Aker Carbon Capture joint venture. “We are proud of the carbon capture plants we are delivering across various industries, with each customer being an important front-runner in its segment. Successful project deliveries are paving the way for other emitters to follow.”

The closing of this joint venture comes shortly after an announcement in April 2024, in which SLB agreed to merge its carbon-capture business unit with ACC through a majority ownership acquisition. SLB will pay NOK Corp. $4.12 billion for an 80% ownership in ACC Holding AS—the holder of ACC. Pending the business’ performance, SLB may also submit additional payments of $1.36 billion to NOK over the next three years.

At the end of 2023, SLB and the Northern Lights joint venture (NL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Microsoft to optimize the integrated cloud-based workflows for NL’s CCS operations. The collaboration will support the development of scalable, cost-efficient digital solutions for the CCS industry. For the initial phases of the partnership, SLB will enhance its digital CCS workflows and numerical simulation systems for the Delfi digital platform. SLB’s Delfi digital platform was deployed to streamline the subsurface workflows of NL in 2022.

Microsoft plans on deploying its Azure platform to guarantee scalable cloud services that support NL’s business and the SLB digital CCS workflows. Microsoft and SLB are cooperating on the development of an Azure-compliant open-source data platform to serve as the digital infrastructure for NL.

The NL joint venture was formed by Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell to advance the decarbonization of industry. NL’s transport and storage facilities will be prepared to receive and store CO₂ from industrial emitters in 2024. The first phase of development has a storage capacity of 1.5 million metric tons of CO₂ per year, and NL has entered into commercial transport and storage agreements with Yara and Ørsted.