Key highlights in June: Longship complete, first offloading and a royal visit

This past week has marked several milestones for Northern Lights JV and Norway’s ambition to lead the development of a full-scale value chain for carbon capture and storage.

Longship officially completed

Longship, the Norwegian government’s full-scale CCS project, is officially completed. Northern Lights is responsible for operating CO₂ transport and storage facilities, open to third parties, as part of Longship. It is 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.

First CO₂ on board

Our first custom-built ship, Northern Pioneer, has started commissioning and carried out its first CO₂ loading and offloading from Heidelberg Materials in Brevik.

At the same time, sister vessel Northern Pathfinder took part in the official Longship completion events and is now ready to enter into commissioning phase. During the ceremony, the vessel was formally blessed by its godmother, Kari Nessa Nordtun, Norway’s Minister of Education and a Stavanger citizen.

Royal visit and political support

The importance of this milestone was underlined by the visit of H.R.H. The Crown Prince of Norway and Minister of Energy Terje Aasland, who explored our CO₂ simulator and boarded the Northern Pathfinder. Their visit highlights the strong political backing for Norway’s leadership in CCS.

PDO approval for Phase 2

As an important next step, Northern Lights has now received official approval from the Ministry of Energy for the Plan for Development and Operation (PDO) for Phase 2. With this approval, we will increase our transport and storage capacity from 1.5 million tonnes to at least 5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

Phase 2 is supported by a grant from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility for Energy  and will be financed primarily through commercial investments. We have already signed an agreement with Stockholm Exergi to handle up to 900,000 tonnes of CO₂ from their bioenergy facility in Sweden – our third commercial customer, alongside existing contracts with Yara in the Netherlands and Ørsted in Denmark.

With Longship completed, our vessels operational, and Phase 2 moving ahead, Northern Lights remains committed to delivering a robust, scalable CO₂ transport and storage value chain for Europe.