Equinor and Germany's RWE (RWEG.DE), opens new tab signed a memorandum of understanding in January 2022 to build a hydrogen supply chain for German power plants to help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
The plans included producing hydrogen from natural gas in combination with carbon capture and storage - known as blue hydrogen - in Norway and exporting it to hydrogen-ready gas power plants in Germany via the world's first offshore hydrogen pipeline.
"The hydrogen pipeline hasn't proved to be viable. That also implies that hydrogen production plans are also put aside," Equinor's spokesperson Magnus Frantzen Eidsvold told Reuters.
"We have decided to discontinue this early-phase project," he added.
The pipeline was not RWE's project, but required support from both Norway and Germany, the German company said in an email to Reuters.
Last year, Equinor CEO Anders Opedal told Reuters the cost of the total supply chain could run into the "tens of billion euros", while the pipeline alone would cost some 3 billion euros ($3.35 billion).
Eidsvold said Equinor also couldn't continue maturing the projects without firm long-term commitments from European buyers to import hydrogen.
"We are not able to make this kind of investments when we don't have long-term agreements and the markets in place," Eidsvold said.
Plans to develop hydrogen-ready gas power plants in Germany with RWE will go ahead but hydrogen for them will be procured on the continent, not exported from Norway, Eidsvold said.
