Discover how the world’s largest and longest-operating carbon storage site is advancing our understanding of CO2 behaviour at the 2025 World CCUS Conference!
Sleipner East, located on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), hosts the world’s largest and longest-operating carbon storage site, with a total of 20 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 injected by Equinor since 1996. The expanding CO2 plume within the Utsira aquifer has been continuously monitored using 4D streamer seismic data since the start of injection.
In 2023, TGS and Viridien acquired a modern, regional ocean bottom node (OBN) survey covering 1,200 km2 of the area. The eastern portion of this survey includes the Sleipner CO2 plume. By leveraging this rich dataset—featuring four components, wide azimuth, and large offsets—alongside a state-of-the-art Full Waveform Inversion (FWI) algorithm, Viridien generated an image of the plume with unprecedented detail and clarity.
The resulting extracted plume geobody reveals nine distinct layers and clearly outlines the vertical migration paths of the supercritical CO2, offering new insights into the complex flow mechanisms at play.
In the photo: 3D model of the plume (colours can be changed) recognising the data owners TGS and Viridien.
