Liverpool Bay CO2 storage signs Crown Estate lease — first UK CCS to reuse offshore infrastructure

What happened

In July 2026, Liverpool Bay CCS Limited, part of Eni's CCUS holding group, signed a seabed lease with The Crown Estate for the CO2 transport and storage system serving the HyNet industrial cluster. It is the first UK carbon storage project to repurpose existing oil and gas infrastructure rather than build from scratch, and the lease is the final property step in a sequence that began with an agreement for lease in 2024 and financial close in April 2025. First CO2 injection is expected in 2028.

The numbers are considerable. More than 75 miles of existing pipelines will be repurposed, along with three offshore structures and an onshore treatment plant to be retrofitted. Some 21 miles of new pipeline will connect industrial capture sites across north-west England and north Wales into the system.

Initial injection capacity is 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, with potential expansion to 10 million tonnes a year after 2030; the first phase is designed to store 109 million tonnes over its lifetime.

"This lease with The Crown Estate is another important step for the Liverpool Bay T&S infrastructure which will serve the wider HyNet cluster," said Stefano Rovelli, managing director of Liverpool Bay CCS.

The technology

The scheme inverts the usual life cycle of offshore hydrocarbons. Liverpool Bay's depleted gas fields, reservoirs beneath the Irish Sea that once sent gas ashore, become the destination rather than the source. CO2 captured at industrial sites in the HyNet cluster, including cement production at Padeswood, low-carbon hydrogen plants and energy-from-waste facilities, will be gathered, treated and compressed onshore, then piped out through the reversed pipeline network for permanent storage in the depleted reservoirs.

Reuse is the innovation. Repurposing pipelines, platforms and a terminal avoids much of the capital cost, construction time and marine disturbance of a new-build system, and gives redundant late-life gas assets a second working decade. It also sets a template: proving that legacy infrastructure can pass integrity, regulatory and insurance tests for CO2 service matters to every other basin operator weighing decommissioning against conversion.

Why it matters for UK & Ireland

HyNet was selected as one of the UK government's Track-1 CCUS clusters in October 2021, backed by the government's £21.7bn, 25-year funding commitment to carbon capture. Liverpool Bay is HyNet's backbone: every capture project in the cluster depends on this system existing on time.

The lease removes one of the last non-construction obstacles between those emitters and a functioning store, supporting an estimated 2,000 construction-phase jobs and around £2bn of supply-chain investment. The Crown Estate notes the UK is targeting 20–30 million tonnes of annual CO2 storage capacity by 2030; at 4.5 million tonnes initially, Liverpool Bay would carry a material share of that.

The Irish Sea location is also strategically suggestive. An operating CO2 store within pipeline or shipping distance of Dublin would change the practical options for Irish industrial decarbonisation, even though no cross-border arrangement has been announced.

What to watch

The 2028 first-injection date is now the test. Between here and there sit the retrofit of the onshore terminal, requalification of 75-plus miles of pipeline for dense-phase CO2, conversion of the offshore structures, and, critically, the parallel delivery of the capture plants that will supply the CO2, led by Padeswood's 2029 start-up. Watch also the sequencing of expansion beyond 4.5 million tonnes: post-2030 growth to 10 million tonnes a year depends on a second wave of HyNet emitters reaching final investment decisions. And watch whether other basins, the southern North Sea and the East Irish Sea's remaining fields, follow the reuse template now that a UK regulator and landlord have accepted it once.