SLB announces agreement to acquire majority ownership in Aker Carbon Capture

SLB has announced an agreement to combine its carbon capture business with Aker Carbon Capture (ACC) to support accelerated industrial decarbonisation at scale.

Bringing together complementary technology portfolios, leading process design expertise and an established project delivery platform, the combination will leverage ACC’s commercial carbon capture product offering and SLB’s new technology developments and industrialisation capability, the company said.

It will create a vehicle for accelerating the introduction of disruptive early-stage technology into the global market on a commercial, proven platform. Following the transaction, SLB will own 80% of the combined business and ACC will own 20%, the company said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees carbon capture, utilisation, and sequestration (CCUS) playing a critical role in the net-zero transition—estimating that over one gigaton of CO2 per year will need to be captured by 2030, scaling up to over six gigatons by 2050.

“For CCUS to have the expected impact on supporting global net-zero ambitions, it will need to scale up 100-200 times in less than three decades,” said Olivier Le Peuch, Chief Executive Officer, SLB. “Crucial to this scale-up is the ability to lower capture costs, which often represent as much as 50-70% of the total spend of a CCUS project. We are excited to create this business with ACC to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture technologies that will shift the economics of carbon capture across high-emitting industrial sectors.”

SLB will pay NOK 4.12 billion to purchase 80% of Aker Carbon Capture Holding AS (ACCH), which holds the business of ACC, and will contribute the SLB carbon capture business to the combined entity. SLB may also make additional payments of up to NOK 1.36 billion over the next three years based on the performance of the business.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of the second quarter, 2024.

A pure-play carbon capture company with solutions, services and technologies serving a range of industries with carbon emissions, Aker Carbon Capture’s portfolio includes the cement, bio and waste-to-energy, gas-to-power and blue hydrogen segments.