Equinor Deploys ANYmal at Northern Lights CCS Facility

Equinor, a leading global energy company, is at the forefront of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining operational efficiency. As part of the Northern Lights Joint Venture, Equinor operates the recently opened Northern Lights CCS facility on the west coast of Norway. It is a normally unmanned facility, which presents unique opportunities for the use of autonomous robots in operations.

The requirements for inspecting a normally unmanned facility are the same as those for a manned facility. The control room is merely half an hour away, but not having personnel nearby presents additional challenges in performing ad-hoc inspections.

By using autonomous robots, the operational costs related to routine and ad-hoc inspections can be reduced, manual inspection intervals can be increased, and improved asset integrity can be achieved through enhanced monitoring and preventive maintenance.
To address these challenges, Equinor needed a solution that could:

• Provide frequent, remote, and repetitive inspections in the unmanned facility.
  
• Reduce unnecessary on-site visits and improve operational efficiency.
  
• Enhance safety for employees by monitoring CO2 concentration in the facility.

To tackle these challenges, Equinor opted to deploy the autonomous ANYmal D robot developed by ANYbotics. After rigorous testing of the robot at the full-scale oil & gas test facility K-Lab, the ANYmal D was deemed ready for deployment at the Northern Lights CCS facility.

Flotilla is an open-source fleet management software for deploying autonomous inspection robots, developed by Equinor. To deploy the ANYmal at Northern Lights, it was necessary to integrate the robot with the Flotilla solution. By using the ANYbotics API, the robot was integrated such that Equinor could utilize the internal digital twin to provide facility context and high-level mission planning for the robot.

Additionally, to comply with cybersecurity requirements, the ANYbotics software was hosted within Equinor’s cloud tenant. This ensured safe communication and operation of the entire system within the IT domain, allowing operators to control and observe the robot in a secure manner from their phones.

Time spent on site is a valuable resource, and to ensure an efficient deployment period, preparations were key. By mapping the facility in advance and preparing the robot’s environment before arrival, the Equinor team, together with an ANYbotics field engineer, was able to have the robot autonomously running throughout the entire facility within the first week of the deployment.

In parallel, the integration with Flotilla was performed with support from the ANYbotics field engineering team. Within the first two weeks of deployment at Northern Lights, the robot ran its first autonomous mission through the Flotilla fleet management system without local supervision.

Equinor aims to deploy robots to perform tasks that are dull, dirty, distant, or dangerous. At the Northern Lights facility, the most prominent use cases are:

• Monitoring CO₂ concentration in the air and alerting operations in case of dangerous levels
• Surveying the perimeter of the ISPS harbour to avoid unnecessary travel to and from the unmanned facility
• Performing frequent and ad-hoc inspections without requiring travel to and from the unmanned facility

In addition, by having the robot close to operations, new use cases arise that are being investigated. One example, discovered due to the robot already being present on site, is monitoring high-pressure pump testing, which reduces risk for the operators by moving them out of harm’s way.

The deployment of ANYmal D at Northern Lights is still in progress, with a focus on ensuring reliable and robust operations, including automatic analysis and anomaly reporting to operations. In parallel, more use-cases are surfacing as the robot remains on site, and evaluating and developing these further will remain a focus for identifying additional value using the robot.

While the Northern Lights facility is a pioneer within CCS, the majority of Equinor’s installations are within the oil & gas domain. Robots that can operate within facilities producing hydrocarbons are a crucial requirement for scaling deployments in Equinor.

To meet the challenges presented by the chemicals and oil & gas industry, ANYbotics is developing the ANYmal X robot. ANYmal X is an ATEX Zone 1-certified version of the existing ANYmal D, suitable for potentially explosive environments.

Northern Lights JV is a joint venture jointly owned by Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell. The company’s mission is to enable the reduction and removal of industrial emissions through the transport and storage of CO₂ as a service. Liquid CO₂ will be collected at industrial sites and sent to the Northern Lights terminal in Øygarden on the west coast of Norway before being transported via subsea pipelines to permanent storage in a reservoir 2,600 meters below the seafloor.

Northern Lights will begin operations in 2025 and is the first company in the world to provide commercially available Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) services across national borders. In the first phase, transport and storage will be provided for Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik and Hafslund Celsio’s waste incineration plant in Oslo. Further commercial agreements for CO₂ transport and storage have been made with Yara in the Netherlands, Ørsted in Denmark, and Stockholm Exergi in Sweden.

Equinor ASA is an international energy company committed to long-term value creation in a low-carbon future. Headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, with operations in more than 20 countries, Equinor is the leading operator on the Norwegian continental shelf. The company’s portfolio encompasses oil and gas, renewables, and low-carbon solutions, with a goal of becoming a net-zero energy company by 2050.

Equinor employs approximately 25,000 people worldwide and is the largest energy supplier to Europe. The Norwegian State holds 67% of the company’s shares. Equinor aims to grow its cash flow, sustain competitive returns, and broaden its energy offering while reducing emissions. The company is investing in profitable projects to contribute to long-term supply security and drive the energy transition.