TotalEnergies and its partners, Equinor and Shell, have completed the construction of receiving and storage facilities of the Northern Lights carbon capture and storage (CCS) joint venture in Norway, which is now ready for its first CO2 injection.
The facilities consist in a terminal that will receive CO2 cargos, a 100 km subsea pipeline for CO2 transportation to the offshore storage location, and subsea injection facilities for safe and permanent CO2 storage in a reservoir 2,600 meters below the seabed.
Northern Lights is now ready to receive and permanently store CO2 from European industries, with first CO2 injection expected in 2025.
Northern Lights is the world’s first commercial CO2 transportation and storage project. The first phase of the project was supported by the Norwegian government and has a capacity of 1.5 Mt CO2/year, which has been fully booked by customers in Norway and Continental Europe.
Studies are under way for a capacity expansion to more than 5 Mt CO2/y in a second phase.
Northern Lights is owned in equal shares by TotalEnergies, Equinor and Shell. The 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.
“We are proud to celebrate today the commissioning of the Northern Lights facilities. It has been a long journey since our partnership with the Norwegian State, Equinor and Shell was established in 2017. This major milestone signals the readiness of the infrastructure to store CO2 and we look forward to receiving the first volumes from hard-to-abate emitters in 2025. This will bring a strong contribution to the decarbonization of European industry”,” said Arnaud Le Foll, Senior Vice-President New Business - Carbon Neutrality at TotalEnergies.
“This is an exciting day for both 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,” added Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President Low Carbon Solutions at Equinor.
“Carbon capture and storage has a vital role to play in helping society achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Alongside efforts to avoid and reduce emissions, CCS will be an essential tool in supporting our customers on their decarbonization journeys, particularly in those industries that are harder to decarbonize,” said Anna Mascolo, Executive Vice President, Shell Low Carbon Solutions.