Eni's Douglas Platform Sets the Offshore CCS Blueprint

Eni has installed the world's first offshore platform purpose-built for industrial carbon capture and storage. The Douglas CCS platform in Liverpool Bay will collect CO2 from industrial emitters in northwest England and north Wales. It will then send that CO2 to depleted gas reservoirs beneath the seabed for permanent storage.

Eni CCUS Holding, a joint venture between Italian energy company Eni and Global Infrastructure Partners, part of BlackRock, announced the installation on October 8, 2026. The platform is the offshore hub of the Liverpool Bay CCS network. That network is the transport and storage backbone of the HyNet industrial decarbonization cluster.

What Makes the Douglas CCS Platform a World First?

The Douglas platform is the first offshore facility built from the start to serve CCS for industrial decarbonization, according to Eni's October 8, 2026 announcement. Earlier offshore structures in the region were designed for oil and gas production.

Eni delivered the platform in less than 18 months from contract award. The 1,885-tonne topside sits on a 1,755-tonne jacket. Eight foundation piles weighing 730 tonnes in total secure it to the seabed.

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The platform works as a hub, not a single-field injection site. It will receive CO2 from the Point of Ayr Gas Terminal in Flintshire, north Wales. It will then route that CO2 to the depleted Hamilton, Hamilton North and Lennox reservoirs.

That hub design lets several emitters share one offshore node. Cement, energy-from-waste and low-carbon hydrogen producers can all feed the same system. None of them has to build its own offshore storage.

When the project reached financial close in April 2025, Eni's chief executive explained why the company is backing CCS for heavy industry.

Eni CCUS Holding's wider portfolio also includes L10-CCS in the Netherlands and Bacton CCS in the UK. The company also holds the right to acquire Eni's 50% stake in the Ravenna CCS project in Italy.

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How Does the Liverpool Bay CCS Network Move CO2 Offshore?

The Liverpool Bay CCS network combines more than 120 kilometres (75 miles) of repurposed pipelines with 34 kilometres (21 miles) of new pipeline. Those figures come from the project's July 2026 seabed lease with The Crown Estate.

The project will also reuse three offshore installations and an onshore treatment plant. The new pipeline links industrial emitters across the region to the existing network. It is the UK's first CCS project to repurpose existing infrastructure.

The storage sites are well understood. The Hamilton, Hamilton North and Lennox reservoirs produced natural gas for decades before conversion. The North Sea Transition Authority awarded the project three carbon storage permits in April 2025.

Phase 1 is designed to store 109 million tonnes of CO2 over its operating life. Starting capacity is 4.5 million tonnes a year. Capacity could reach 10 million tonnes a year after 2030.

Milestone	Date
HyNet selected as a UK Track-1 CCUS cluster	October 2021
The Crown Estate awards Agreement for Lease	August 2024
UK commits up to £21.7 billion over 25 years to HyNet and the East Coast Cluster	October 2024
Financial close with UK government and three NSTA storage permits	April 2025
Eni CCUS Holding secures financing facility of more than £500 million	May 2026
Seabed lease signed with The Crown Estate	July 2026
Douglas CCS platform installed, network about 50% complete	October 2026
First CO2 injection expected	2028

Installation is a construction milestone. CO2 injection performance will be demonstrated once operations begin.

Who Is Financing Eni's Offshore CCS Network?

The project is backed by a 25-year UK government commitment and private lenders. In October 2024, the UK committed up to £21.7 billion over 25 years to its first two CCS clusters. Those clusters are HyNet and the East Coast Cluster in Teesside and the Humber.

Eni and the UK government reached financial close on Liverpool Bay CCS in April 2025. That step moved the project into construction.

Lender demand stayed strong after the project financing. In May 2026, Eni CCUS Holding secured a financing facility of more than £500 million from 13 international lenders. Requests to participate significantly exceeded the amount first targeted, the company said.

The joint venture model matters too. Eni brings operating experience and depleted reservoirs. Global Infrastructure Partners brings long-term infrastructure capital.

Why Are North American CCS Developers Watching Liverpool Bay?

Liverpool Bay gives offshore CCS developers a working reference for a purpose-built CO2 hub. Its financing, engineering and build schedule are now public. That is useful for teams planning similar systems in the Gulf of Mexico.

ExxonMobil holds the largest CCS transportation and storage lease in US history. The Texas General Land Office signed the agreement on October 10, 2024. It covers about 271,068 acres of submerged state land off Jefferson, Chambers and Galveston counties.

The lease lets ExxonMobil inject CO2 into geologically secure strata about one to two miles below the Gulf of Mexico. Onshore, its Gulf Coast carbon capture network had about 9 million tonnes per year of CO2 under contract across six customers as of January 2026.

US projects also draw on the 45Q tax credit. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act kept it at $85 per tonne for point-source capture in July 2025.

Shared CO2 Network	Location	Storage Type	Key Figure
Liverpool Bay CCS (Eni CCUS Holding)	Irish Sea, UK	Offshore depleted gas reservoirs	4.5 million tonnes per year initially
ExxonMobil Texas GLO lease	Gulf of Mexico, Texas	Offshore geologic strata	About 271,068 acres leased
Origins CCS Hub (Enhance Energy)	Near Clive, Alberta	Onshore geological storage	Up to 1.5 million metric tons per year
Pathways (Oil Sands Alliance)	Northern Alberta to Cold Lake	Onshore storage hub	16 million tonnes per year planned by 2035

Canada is building the same shared model onshore. Enhance Energy's Origins CCS Hub near Clive, Alberta, is designed to store up to 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 a year, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Canada, Alberta and the Oil Sands Alliance signed a trilateral agreement on Pathways on July 2, 2026. The alliance plans to transport and store 16 million tonnes of CO2 a year from the oil sands by 2035.

Bison Low Carbon Ventures has started first-phase injection at its Meadowbrook Carbon Storage Hub. It was the first of Alberta's 25 CCS hub tenures to start injecting CO2.

Its first source is the Deep Sky Alpha direct air capture facility. Bison is targeting 3 million tons a year from multiple emitters, part of Canada's fast-growing carbon capture sector.

What Does Shared CCS Infrastructure Mean for Hard-to-Abate Industry?

Shared infrastructure gives cement, waste and hydrogen producers a storage route they could not build alone. HyNet's first connected emitters include Heidelberg Materials' Padeswood cement plant in north Wales.

Heidelberg Materials says Padeswood could capture up to 800,000 tonnes of CO2. Other early emitters include Encyclis' Protos energy recovery facility and Viridor's Runcorn energy recovery facility. EET's low-carbon hydrogen plant at Stanlow is also connecting.

Each emitter pays to capture its own CO2. The cost of pipelines, the offshore platform, permits and monitoring is spread across the whole cluster. That shared cost base is what makes the model work for smaller emitters.

The Carbon Capture and Storage Association sees the same advantage.

Olivia Powis made that comment in July 2026, when Liverpool Bay CCS signed its seabed lease. The Douglas installation adds a new purpose-built hub to that repurposed backbone.

For heavy industry, the result is a practical path to deep emissions cuts. Cement and energy-from-waste plants keep operating. Their CO2 goes into long-term geological storage instead of the atmosphere.

What Comes Next for Liverpool Bay CCS?

Construction now moves toward first CO2 injection in 2028. With the network about 50% complete, the remaining work connects emitters, pipelines and wells into one operating system.

The Douglas platform is expected to anchor operations for more than 25 years. It gives developers in the UK, the Gulf of Mexico and Alberta a real-world model for shared CO2 transport and storage.

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