Construction work has finished on the Northern Lights development’s cross-border CO2 transport and storage site in Øygarden, near Bergen.
The Equinor-operated development features a new terminal that will receive CO2 cargos, a 100-km subsea pipeline transporting the CO2 to the offshore storage location in the North Sea, and subsea injection facilities that will be used to store the CO2 in a reservoir 2,600 m below the seabed.
Northern Lights, part of the Longship CCS project, is now ready to receive and permanently store CO2 emitted by various industrial organizations in Norway and neighboring countries, with first CO2 injection now expected in 2025.
According to Equinor, this is world’s first commercial CO2 transportation and storage project. The other partners in the joint venture are Shell and TotalEnergies.
Norway’s government provided 80% support for the first phase, which has a (fully booked) capacity of 1.5 MMt/year of CO2. Equinor estimates the cost of the first-phase terminal and offshore facilities at NOK7.6 billion (US$721 million), and that does not include the transportation ships or the CO2 capture plants.
