Eni installs world’s first purpose-built offshore CCS platform as Liverpool Bay project reaches 50 percent completion
Eni SpA announced Thursday it had finished installing the Douglas CCS platform in the Irish Sea — what the Italian energy company calls the world’s first purpose-built offshore facility dedicated to carbon capture and storage for industrial decarbonization. The milestone puts the broader Liverpool Bay CCS project at 50 percent completion.
Eni completes Douglas CCS platform installation
The Douglas CCS platform isn’t a small structure. It has a 1,885-ton topside, a supporting jacket weighing 1,755 tons, and eight foundation piles totaling 730 tons anchoring it to the seabed. Getting all of that into position in the Irish Sea is a genuine engineering achievement — and it’s what pushed Liverpool Bay CCS past the halfway mark.
Eni didn’t hold back in framing the moment. The company called Douglas CCS the first purpose-built offshore platform anywhere in the world dedicated to CCS for industrial decarbonization, making that claim directly in Thursday’s announcement.
Even so, Liverpool Bay CCS, with its 4.5 MMtpa starting capacity and a 10 MMtpa ceiling, is clearly a step up in ambition from what Eni built in Italy.
How the platform fits into the Liverpool Bay CCS design
Douglas CCS isn’t sitting out there on its own. It’s the receiving end of a CO2 transport chain that starts at industrial sites across North West England and North Wales. Emissions captured at those facilities travel through a network of repurposed offshore pipelines until they reach depleted natural gas reservoirs, where the CO2 gets stored permanently.
That blend of new and existing infrastructure is something Eni highlights as central to the project. Reusing offshore assets cuts both costs and construction time. The Irish Sea’s depleted reservoirs also carry decades of operational history, so the geology is already well understood — nobody’s starting from scratch.
Liverpool Bay CCS as the storage backbone of HyNet
Liverpool Bay CCS provides the transport and storage infrastructure for HyNet, a larger industrial decarbonization cluster covering North West England and North Wales. Think of it as the plumbing that makes the wider HyNet system function.
HyNet’s initial storage capacity is up to 4.5 million metric tons per annum (MMtpa). That’s already substantial, but the consortium plans to push further — the longer-term target is 10 MMtpa, more than double the opening figure. All of that CO2 will be injected into depleted hydrocarbon fields under the Irish Sea, using geology that no longer produces fossil fuels to instead lock away industrial emissions.
Financing and broader CCUS portfolio backing the project
Liverpool Bay CCS isn’t running on ambition alone. Eni’s CCUS joint venture with BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners — operating as Eni CCUS Holding — secured more than €500 million (roughly $561 million) in financing from 13 international lenders, including Banco BPM, BNP Paribas, BPER, DNB, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Mediobanca, Mizuho, MUFG, NatWest, SMBC, Societe Generale, and UniCredit.
That financing extends beyond Liverpool Bay. It also supports L10-CCS in the Netherlands and the Bacton CCS project in the UK, which Eni has described as having the potential to decarbonize industries across South East England and continental Europe. GIP joined Eni CCUS Holding in late 2025, picking up a 49.99 percent stake, with both parties holding joint control of the venture. Eni CCUS Holding also holds the right to acquire Eni’s 50 percent stake in the Ravenna CCS project in Italy, which could eventually fold into the same portfolio.
Context: Eni’s existing CCS operations in Europe
Liverpool Bay CCS is ambitious, but Eni has done this before. Ravenna CCS in Italy started injection in 2024, capturing CO2 from Eni’s natural gas treatment plant in Casalborsetti and storing around 25,000 metric tons per year. The CO2 moves through repurposed gas pipelines to the offshore Porto Corsini Mare Ovest platform, then gets injected down into the depleted Porto Corsini Mare Ovest gas field.
Phase 2 of Ravenna targets storage of up to 4 MMtpa by 2030 — a steep jump from Phase 1’s current scale. Even so, Liverpool Bay CCS, with its 4.5 MMtpa starting capacity and a 10 MMtpa ceiling, is clearly a step up in ambition from what Eni built in Italy.
What the Liverpool Bay milestone means in practice
Here’s the short version: Eni has installed a purpose-built offshore CCS platform — a first of its kind — as part of a project that will serve as the storage backbone for one of the UK’s main industrial decarbonization clusters. The Douglas platform will route captured CO2 from factories across North West England and North Wales into permanent subsea storage. The project is now halfway done, backed by over €500 million in international financing, and sits inside a growing CCUS portfolio spanning the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy. The engineering is in place. The financing is locked in. Now comes the second half of the build.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
