About the Longship project

Northern Lights is responsible for developing and operating CO₂ transport and storage facilities, open to third parties, as part of Longship, the Norwegian Government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project. It will be the first ever cross-border, open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure network and offers companies across Europe the opportunity to store their CO₂ safely and permanently underground. Phase one of the project will be ready to receive CO₂ in 2024 with a storage capacity of up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

Longship includes capturing CO₂ from industrial sources in the Oslo-fjord region (cement and waste-to-energy) and shipping liquid CO₂ from these industrial capture sites to an onshore terminal on the Norwegian west coast. From there, the liquefied CO₂ will be transported by pipeline to an offshore storage location subsea in the North Sea, for permanent storage. Northern Lights is responsible for the transport and storage components of the project.

The Longship project reflects the Norwegian Government’s ambition to develop a full-scale CCS value chain in Norway, demonstrating the potential of this decarbonisation approach to Europe and the world. The Norwegian Government has demonstrated strong, long-standing leadership in realising full scale CCS. With support of the Norwegian Government, Northern Lights can provide realistic decarbonisation opportunities for Norwegian and European industries.

The government issued feasibility studies on capture, transport and storage solutions in 2016. Combined, these studies showed the feasibility of putting together the pieces of the value chain and realising a full-scale CCS project.

Based on this outcome, the government decided to continue development through an agreement covering concept and FEED (front-end engineering and design) studies. Gassnova represents the Norwegian state and acts as the coordinating body. The studies covered:

• Capture of CO₂  at the Heidelberg Materials (previously Norcem) cement factory in Brevik.
• Capture of CO₂  at the waste-to-energy plant Hafslund Oslo Celsio in Oslo.
• A combined transport and storage solution, managed by Northern Lights JV DA.

The pre-project (concept and FEED studies) was governed by a study agreement between Gassnova and Equinor. A collaboration agreement between Equinor, Shell and Total governed the study and execution preparation work and the preparations for establishing a Joint Venture Agreement. In May 2020, the three companies took an investment decision, based on information on the quality and capacity of the reservoir acquired in the drilling of the “Eos” confirmation well in early 2020, and a commercial agreement with the state.

Following a historic vote in parliament, the Norwegian Government in December 2020 took its funding decision and named the project Longship.