The Norwegian Minister of Energy has 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 decarbonization of European industry and energy and shows the role we and our partners take in developing low carbon solutions in the energy transition,” says 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 decarbonize their processes.

The Norwegian Minister of Energy, Terje Aasland (left), and Equinor CEO Anders Opedal. (Image credit: Torstein Lund Eik/Equinor)

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,” says 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.