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 main West European supplier of long-term pipeline natural gas directly to Germany, France Belgium and the UK, said seven companies had applied for production licences in the 25th licensing round on the Norwegian shelf with any gas finds providing more competition to LNG cargoes from outside the region.

“The numbered rounds are focused on key parts in our least explored, open areas,” said Tina Bru, the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy.

“They are an important supplement to the APA (awards in pre-defined areas) rounds as exploration activity in immature areas gives the state as a resource owner more knowledge about the resource potential,” explained Bru.

“It enables us to identify resources and create value for the community. We will now start processing the applications from the seven companies,” she stated.

Norway, while being the main pipeline natural gas supplier to Europe, along with Russia’s Gazprom, is in competition to LNG deliveries from nations such as Qatar, the US, Nigeria, Algeria and Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Russia.

The Norwegians are also the only large-scale producers of LNG in Western Europe from the Hammerfest LNG plant, which has been closed until the third quarter of 2021 because of ongoing repairs from a fire in September 2020.

Damage caused by the fire at the LNG facility will take until around October 2021 to repair.

The fire, in which no one was killed nor injured, suffered its main damage from large amounts of seawater from the extinguishing process downing auxiliary systems such as electrical equipment and cables.

Feed-gas for the single-Train Hammerfest liquefaction facility, which exports around 5 million tonnes per annum of LNG, comes from the Snohvit gas field in the Barents Sea.

The 25th licensing round comprises nine areas outside the APA area on the Norwegian shelf.

The round was announced on the 19th of November 2020 and includes one area in the Norwegian Sea and eight in the Barents Sea.

The companies that have applied for production licences are: Norske Shell; Equinor Energy; Idemitsu Petroleum Norge; Ineos E&P Norge ; Lundin Norway AS; OMV (Norge) and Var Energi AS.

Norway also allocates exploration areas on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and these take place annually through two equal licensing rounds.

These rounds include areas in the most famous exploration areas. As exploration activity has been going on for several decades, the most well-known exploration areas now include most of the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea and a large part of the Barents Sea to the south.

The Ministry in January 2021 awarded 61 upstream licences in pre-defined areas of the NCS to 30 licensees, including prominent LNG players such as BP, Shell, Total and Eni of Italy, as well as ConocoPhillips, the only bidder among US majors.

Norway, the only European LNG exporter from its own plant, has signalled that exploration and production investment on the Norwegian Continental Shelf is alive and well with 33 energy companies applying for blocks in the latest licensing round.