CO2 facility completed in Norway

The joint venture of Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell unveiled its completed CO2 receiving facilities in Øygarden, Norway.

The Northern Lights onshore and offshore infrastructure is now ready to receive CO2 from Norwegian and European industries. Northern Lights is the first to offer commercial CO2 transport and storage as a service, the companies said.

“Today we achieved an important milestone on our journey to demonstrate CCS as a viable option to help achieve climate goals,” said Managing Director of Northern Lights JV Tim Heijn. “The whole world is looking to Norway to learn about CCS. Since construction started, we have welcomed more than 10,000 visitors from more than 50 countries. Today we celebrated the completion of the facilities together with the people of our host municipality Øygarden, the Norwegian Ministry of Energy, and key stakeholders, including policy makers and industry partners in the CCS chain. All are instrumental for the success of Northern Lights and the CCS business in Europe.”

The Northern Lights partnership began in 2017, and construction of the facilities began in 2021 after the owners finalized their investment decision and the historic approval vote for the Longship project in the Norwegian parliament.

Longship includes capturing CO2 from industrial sources in the Oslo-fjord region (cement and waste-to-energy) and shipping liquid CO2 from these industrial capture sites to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquefied CO2 will be transported by pipeline to an offshore storage location subsea in the North Sea, for permanent storage. Northern Lights is responsible for the transport and storage components of the project.

“This is an exciting day for Equinor, Northern Lights Joint Venture and our partners Shell and TotalEnergies. We are proud that Northern Lights, as part of the Longship value chain, has now been completed and is ready to receive CO2. It is an important milestone in the work of establishing a Carbon Capture and Storage value-chain in Europe.”, said Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President Low Carbon Solutions at Equinor.