Northern Lights CO2 consortium backs Phase 2 expansion

Equinor and partners Shell and TotalEnergies have committed to invest NOK7.5 billion ($714 million) in a Phase 2 development of their Northern Lights carbon capture project.

It follows signing of a commercial agreement with a fifth customer, Stockholm Exergi, for transport and storage of emitted CO₂ — in this case, 900,000 metric tons of biogenic CO₂ annually for a period of 15 years.

The Phase 2 investment includes a grant of €131 million ($141.6 million) from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding scheme, approved last year by the European Commission. Total injection capacity to the reservoir, 2,600 m subsurface in the Norwegian North Sea, will rise from the 1.5 MMt/year of CO₂ earmarked for Phase 1 to at least 5 MMt/year.

The expansion will include construction of further onshore storage tanks, a new jetty and additional injection wells. These facilities should be completed and ready to start operating in the second half of 2028.

Equinor will continue as technical service provider for Phase 2, managing development, construction and operation on behalf of the partnership.

The four companies that had signed up for CO₂ transport and storage under the first phase were Heidelberg Materials and Celsio, both in Norway, Yara in the Netherlands, and Ørsted in Denmark. Discussions are also advancing with various large European industrial companies concerning remaining storage capacity.

Phase 1 received support from the Norwegian government’s Longship initiative, which set out to demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale CO₂ capture, transport and storage. Northern Lights focuses on the transport and storage aspects, with captured and liquefied CO₂ from client sites transported by ship to the receiving terminal onshore at Øygarden near Kollsnes on Norway’s west coast.

Operations are due to start this summer, later than originally planned, with CO₂ from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik due to be delivered to the reception terminal near Kollsnes on Norway’s west coast.

Northern Lights will also store CO₂ from the Hafslund Celsio waste-to-energy complex in Oslo, as part of the Longship project.

From Øygarden, the CO₂ will be transported via a subsea pipeline for storage in the North Sea reservoir

Norway’s government is covering about 80% of the cost for Phase 1. Equinor has led the construction of the onshore site at Øygarden and the offshore facilities.