Northern Lights ready to receive CO₂
The world’s first cross-border CO2 transport and storage facility has been completed and is ready to receive and store CO2.
On 26 September, the Norwegian Minister of Energy conducted the official opening of the Northern Lights CO2 transport and storage facility in Øygarden, near Bergen. The Northern Lights facility is a joint venture between Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies.
“The completion of the Northern Lights facility marks an important milestone for the global development of a business model for carbon capture, transport and storage. It opens a value chain for decarbonisation of European industry and energy and shows the role we and our partners take in developing low carbon solutions in the energy transition,” said CEO Anders Opedal.
Large scale carbon capture, transport and storage (CCS) will play a key role in the energy transition as it offers a solution for large and hard-to-abate industrial emitters that need to decarbonise their processes.
The Northern Lights project is part of the Norwegian full-scale CCS project named Longship. The full-scale project includes capture of CO2 from industrial sources and shipping of liquid CO2 to the terminal in Øygarden. From there, the liquified CO2 will be transported by pipeline to the offshore storage location below the seabed in the North Sea, for safe and permanent storage.
“This project demonstrates what can be achieved when authorities and industry are working towards the same goal and co-invest to reduce risks. Equinor has several CO2 transport and storage developments in our portfolio as operator and partner. The established Northern Lights value chain and experience from the project will be valuable in maturing and scaling up future CCS projects,” said Opedal.
The first phase capacity of 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year is fully booked, and the joint venture owners continue to work on plans to increase the transport and storage capacity for the future.
Northern Lights
- Northern Lights JV is a registered, incorporated General Partnership with Shared Liability (DA), equally owned by Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell.
- The Northern Lights facility consists of a receiving terminal, injection pipeline and subsea installations.
- Equinor has been in charge of building the onshore plant in Øygarden as well as the offshore facilities on behalf of Northern Lights JV and partners. The budget of this scope is 7.5 billion NOK. This does not include the ships or the CO2 capture plants.
- The first phase of this development of the value chain is 80 per cent funded by the Norwegian state as part of the Longship project.
- Longship is a comprehensive CCS project initiated by the Norwegian government, aiming to demonstrate CO2 capture, transport, and storage at scale.
- Northern Lights, a key part of this initiative, focuses specifically on the transport and storage elements.
- Captured and liquefied CO2 at the customers sites is transported by ship to the onshore receiving terminal at Øygarden.
- From the terminal, CO2 is transported by pipeline for storage in a reservoir 2.600 meters under the seabed in the North Sea.
- The Northern Lights project created ripple effects in 2023 of 1.7 bn NOK in deliveries, over 900 man-years and 1.3 bn NOK in value creation.
