Northern Lights CCS Project Advances To Phase 2

By B. Henry Henderson

Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies have made a final investment decision to move forward with phase two of the Northern Lights development. The decision was made after signing a commercial agreement with Stockholm Exergi to transport and store up to 992,080 tons (900,000 tonnes) of biogenic CO₂ annually for 15 years.

Northern Lights is responsible for developing and operating CO₂ transport and storage facilities, open to third parties, as part of Longship, the Norwegian government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. It is the first ever cross-border, open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure network and offers companies across Europe the opportunity to store CO₂ permanently underground. Phase one of the project has a storage capacity of up to 1.5 MTPA.

Longship includes capturing CO₂ from industrial sources in the Oslo-fjord region and shipping liquid CO₂ from these industrial capture sites to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquefied CO₂ is transported by pipeline to an offshore storage location subsea in the North Sea, for permanent storage. Northern Lights, which is owned by Equinor, Shell, and Total Energies, is responsible for the transport and storage components of the project.

Phase two of the development will increase the total injection capacity from 1.5 MTPA of CO₂ to at least 5 MTPA. The expansion through phase two builds on existing onshore and offshore infrastructure and includes additional onshore storage tanks, a new jetty, and additional injection wells. This development phase is expected to be completed and ready for operation in the second half of 2028. Equinor will remain the technical service provider for phase two, responsible for development, construction and operation on behalf of the partnership.

“This is a major step in the further development of a large-scale carbon capture, transportation, and storage value chain. The support from the Norwegian Government and European Commission has been important contributing factors to successfully completing phase one and advancing phase two,” said Anders Opedal, chief executive office of Equinor. “That we are now able to progress the Northern Lights’ project second phase on a commercial basis, demonstrates the value of public-private partnerships to reduce risk and attract customers.”

The first phase of the Northern Lights project aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of a new business model, solutions, and operations through collaboration among authorities, customers and project partners. In September 2024, the Norwegian Minister of Energy conducted the official opening of the Northern Lights CO₂ transport and storage facility in Øygarden, Bergen, marking an important milestone for the global development of a business model for CCS. With strong support by the Norwegian government’s Longship initiative, phase one is fully booked. CO₂ from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik is expected to arrive at the receiving terminal near Kollsnes on Norway’s west coast this summer and then injected into and permanent stored in a reservoir that is 8530 ft. (2600 m) below the seabed, off the coast of Øygarden, western Norway. In addition, Northern Lights will store CO₂ from the Hafslund Celsio waste-to-energy plant in Oslo, as part of the Longship project.

“I am very pleased that the partners in Northern Lights have progressed to the second phase of the Northern Lights project,” said Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for marketing, midstream, and processing at Equinor. “As the recently published European Clean Industrial Deal makes clear, large-scale carbon capture, transport, and storage will be crucial in the energy transition as it offers a solution for hard-to-abate industrial emitters to decarbonize their processes.”