LNG

Norway, the LNG producer and a main supplier of natural gas and petroleum in Western Europe, praised the progress of its Northern Lights carbon-capture joint venture, one of the largest in the world to capture and store carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Marte Mjøs Persen has just made a speech on the progress of the Northern Lights CCS project.

“Despite living in the grasp of the pandemic, I consider climate change and the energy transition as the challenges of our lifetime,” she stated.

“Last month, I had the pleasure to visit the Northern Lights facility at Øygarden,” explained the Minister.

The Northern Lights joint venture is the storage part of an even larger project called Longship.

Northern Lights will receive captured CO2 transported on ships to the Øygarden municipality on the Western Coast of Norway.

NCS site

The CO2 will then be temporarily stored at Øygarden before being sent through a pipeline to the storage site on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

At the storage site CO2 will be pumped down to a sealed reservoir for permanent storage 2,600 metres below the seabed.

“What I already knew, and which certainly became even clearer there, is that CCS is a crucial part of the solution to the climate challenge,” said Mjøs Persen.

“And, that Norway can offer an open access storage solution that is built on the knowledge and experience we have developed on the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” she stated.

The Minister added that CCS can also make an important contribution to the development of new and green industries, such as carbon neutral cement production and hydrogen.

“The government is committed to following up the Longship-project and invest in CCS to cut emissions and create jobs and to develop a robust value-chain for CCS and the storage in the North Sea,” she declared.

“However, as we all know, if CCS is to become an efficient instrument in reducing emissions, the Norwegian CCS project must be a catalyst for other European projects and for international technology development,” said Mjøs Persen

The Norwegian CO2 reservoir site is located in the northern part of the North Sea, southwest of the Troll oil and gas field, one of the largest on the NCS.

The estimated total investment under the development plan is close to 6 billion Norwegian crowns ($780 million) and annual operating costs will be around 370M crowns ($44M).

The approved plan has the capacity to store 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 annually and has a planned operational period of 25 years.

Northern Lights will be built and operated by the Northern Lights joint venture, comprising energy companies Equinor of Norway, and the Norwegian subsidiaries of Shell and France’s TotalEnergies.

Norway, the LNG producer and a main supplier of natural gas and petroleum in Western Europe, has approved the development plan for the Northern Lights joint venture, one of the largest in the world for the capture, transport and storage of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.