Another blow for Teesworks as BP cools on its carbon capture caper

Following on from recent bad news at SeAH Wind, Teesworks has suffered another blow, as BP announces that it’s cutting its stake in two key carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, Net Zero Teesside (NZT) and the Northern Endurance Partnership project (NEP)

Net Zero Teesside

On 7 May, BP confirmed to investors that it plans to continue to retreat from its green agenda. This development could turn out to be more seismic than the SeAH failure. According to trade journal Energy Voice (paywalled) “The oil and gas giant could sell off 50% of its stake in the planned NZT power project with CCS.”

Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP)

BP also plans to cut its stake in the NEP, which plans to build a network of offshore pipelines to transport CO₂ to the North Sea for permanent storage. Energy Voice is quoting BP as saying that it wants to sell 20% of its stake in NEP.

BP and Teesside: The start of a love affair

It all started so well. Almost five years ago, in July 2021, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen took BP CEO Bernard Looney on a personal tour of Teesworks as they chatted about NZT and H2Teesside, BP’s ‘blue’ hydrogen project. Houchen promised that NZT would be up and running by 2026. You can find another 30 worthless Ben Houchen statements here. Four months later, the love-in was cemented when BP announced a third scheme for Teesworks, HyGreen, a ‘green’ hydrogen project.

But love can be a messy business

Things started to go downhill in September 2023, when Bernard Looney had to resign from BP because of actual love affairs. Looney was replaced by Murray Auchincloss, who started the company’s pivot away from its ambition to take BP ‘Beyond Petroleum’. But Auchincloss’ shift back to oil and gas wasn’t moving swiftly enough for activist shareholders, and he was ditched after less than two years in post. Next time, the company went for broke: On 1 April 2026, BP appointed Meg O’Neill as CEO. Ms O’Neill is a 23-year veteran of ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas company in the United States.

BP and Teesside: The end of a love affair

In March 2025, while Murray Auchincloss was still CEO of BP, the company ditched Hygreen. Nine months later, in December 2025, H2Teesside was cancelled. So that was the end for BP, hydrogen and two key Teesworks projects. In 2026, predictably, Meg O’Neill isn’t wasting any time. Within weeks of being appointed, she’s selling BPs interests in its two remaining Teesside projects.

So, what will this mean for NZT?

NZT is a joint venture between BP and Norwegian state oil company Equinor. BP currently holds a 75% state in NZT, so presumably wishes to reduce this to 37.5%. Will Equinor wish to increase its stake? Possibly, but this is unlikely, because Equinor is on the same journey as BP, pivoting away from ‘green’ projects, and concentrating on oil and gas extraction.

Could NZT be a stranded asset?

As the UK’s electricity generation from renewables picks up, the grid will depend less and less on gas-fired power stations for ‘baseload’ power, and instead use them as standby facilities. So, instead of running 24/7, they will only be called on to meet peak demand. And it’s not just the increase in renewables that will reduce the call on gas. Battery storage, imports via interconnectors, and better demand management via smart tariffs, will all continue to flatten those peaks. NZT began construction at the end of 2025. By the time it’s ready in 2029, it could already be a stranded asset.

Energy price shock

There are two further reasons why gas-fired power stations may go out of fashion. Firstly, the UK may finally learn its lesson from the mayhem inflicted by two energy price shocks in just four years, and reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. The second is more existential: If we keep burning oil and gas at the present rate we’ll make the planet uninhabitable.

Northern Endurance Partnership

But it’s BP’s plans to reduce its stake in the NEP that could spell the most trouble for Teesworks. When NEP was created in 2020, it announced a five-way joint venture between BP, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni and Shell. Despite this announcement, Eni didn’t take part in the venture. Shell sold its share in NEP in April 2023. BP and Equinor bought Shell’s share between them. As of 7 May 2026, BP and Equinor own 45% each of NEP. TotalEnergies owns the remaining 10%. Here’s Energy Voice again: “The firm is looking to shift 20% of its venture in the NEP, which forms the 90 plus mile transportation backbone for the wider East Coast Cluster (ECC) carbon capture project in Teesside” You can find out more about the EAST CO₂AST CLUSTER (ECC) here. See what they did there? But I’ll keep mention of the ECC to a minimum, and stick with the NEP; there are too many acronyms flying about.

Falling out of fashion

A decision by BP to try to sell a 9% stake in NEP doesn’t sound like a major deal. But who would want to buy it? Probably not Equinor, for the reason already stated. Would TotalEnergies wish to increase its 10% stake? Possibly, but it didn’t increase its stake when Shell sold up three years ago. Suddenly, CCS isn’t flavour of the month anymore. Here’s Storegga pulling out of the Acorn CCS project in Scotland in December 2025. Storegga is one of the leading CCS specialists, and even they aren’t interested in UK CCS projects.

About the Northern Endurance Partnership

The NEP is a partnership between Teesside and Humberside, designed to capture CO₂ emitted by major industrial users. The intention is to collect CO₂, then deliver it via pipeline networks to two coastal centres at Redcar (Teesside) and Easington (Humberside). Two subsea pipelines, each about 90 miles in length, will transport the CO₂ from Redcar and Easington to a collection point above the Endurance Aquifer. The aquifer is a massive water-bearing layer of rock, 1,000 metres beneath the bed of the North Sea. Another pipe network will inject the CO₂ into the aquifer. Here’s a map of the project:

A hard target

The Teesside pipeline is intended to eventually deliver 10 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of CO2 to the Endurance Aquifer. The Humberside one has a target of 17 Mtpa. So, that’s an overall target of 27 Mtpa for NEP. But, based on the operators now involved, and the reduced amount of CO₂ that they are expected to generate, the actual total will be a small fraction of this.

Teesside

So, first of all, an analysis of Teesside’s CO₂ throughput. The map below includes the NEP’s original list of suppliers. Of the eight suppliers included, two of them, Kellas and H2Teesside have been cancelled. 8 Rivers was announced five years ago and never heard of again. CCS funding was stripped from the TVERF project at the design stage, and it will operate without it. NZT is meant to generate 2 Mtpa of CO₂, but this assumes continuous operation. This won’t happen, for the reasons described above.

Humberside

Humberside’s prospects are far worse than Teesside’s. Details can be found on the map below. The map purports to show NEP’s CO₂ suppliers, but it’s largely a work of fiction. Drax Power Station, the UK’s largest emitter of CO₂, ditched its plans for CCS in April 2026. Drax would have transported 13.3 Mtpa of CO₂ to the Endurance Aquifer, almost 50% of the planned volume of Teesside and Humberside combined. This major blow to NEP was reported by specialist trade journals, but the story wasn’t picked up by mainstream media. NEP’s website still incorrectly includes Drax as a CCS customer.

Imaginary suppliers

Leaving aside Drax, Humberside is similar to Teesside, in that most of the projects illustrated on its map don’t bear any scrutiny. Keadby Hydrogen is a speculative 900mw power station, planned to run on unspecified ‘low carbon hydrogen’, supplies of which do not exist as of May 2026. It appears twice on the map for some reason.

Double double vision

Equinor’s proposed blue hydrogen plant also appears twice on the map. There’s a lot of padding going on here. And the plant probably won’t get built. As we’ve seen, Equinor is growing cold on any projects not solely dependent on oil and gas. The company has just cancelled a similar blue hydrogen project in the Netherlands, even though this had financial backing from the European Union. Uniper is planning the Humber H2ub, a ‘green’ hydrogen hub. Even if this happens, it doesn’t belong on the map, because green hydrogen production doesn’t generate CO₂. That’s the whole point of it. Green hydrogen schemes are often just greenwashing exercises.

Oh dear, Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Velocys, aka Altalto, may make ‘sustainable’ aviation fuel (SAF), which is unsustainable, if it ever gets built. The project was given a £27mn in public subsidy in 2022, and another £3mn in 2025. Altalto’s story arc, of a journey going nowhere, is similar to that of Project Speedbird on Teesside.

British Steel to the rescue?

Can the steel industry help NEP’s Humberside operation out, as the map suggests? That’s very doubtful. Assuming that British Steel is re-nationalised, and Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces are saved, any prospects of capturing carbon from this operation are remote. CCS from steel production has never been achieved, nor is it likely to be.

Whistling past the graveyard

So, the NEP won’t ever meet its CO₂ target, or anywhere near it. But you won’t hear any of the stakeholders in either Teesside or Humberside admit it. In Teesside, £4bn in spoils is still being divided up. Much of this is derived from a £21.7bn CCS and Hydrogen subsidy being provided over ten years by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). Meanwhile DESNZ keeps whistling past the graveyard with NEP and ECC. As an example, it has issued six updates for non-pipeline suppliers in the last month alone.

Fossil fuel lobby

BP CEO Meg O’Neill has made the correct decision in offloading stakes in NZT and NEP. That’s if she can find anybody to buy them. Meanwhile, Teesside politicians mindlessly cheer CCS on. For example, Labour’s Luke Myer, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, and former Stockton South Conservative MP Lord Wharton, are members of the CCS All-Party Parliamentary Group.The influence of the fossil fuel lobby is so insidious that many of them don’t realise that they’ve been bought, as the UK runs up an eye-watering £264 billion price tag on CCS.

Could somebody please explain? Nobody ever explains who will bear the sheer cost of burying that CO₂ way out beneath the North Sea. And nobody ever mentions the energy that will be wasted in doing so. The £4bn NEP budget would be far better spent on protecting existing forests and planting new ones. That’s how you REALLY capture CO₂.