The Northern Lights decarbonisation initiative, a joint venture (JV) owned by European oil companies Equinor ASA (NYSE:EQNR), Shell Plc (LON:SHEL) and TotalEnergies SE (EPA:TTE), has signed a commercial agreement with Norwegian fertiliser producer Yara International to transport and permanently store its CO2 under the seabed off the coast of Norway.
The CO2 will be captured from Yara’s ammonia and fertiliser plant in Sluiskil, the Netherlands, and transported by ship to the receiving terminal for storage at 2,600 metres (8,530 ft) under the seabed on the Norwegian continental shelf. From early 2025, 800,000 tonnes of CO2 will be captured, compressed and liquefied in the Netherlands before starting the voyage, Equinor said.
The commercial agreement on cross-border CO2 transport and storage with Yara is said to the world’s first.
"With this commercial agreement, we are passing a major milestone in the development of a value chain for carbon capture, transport and storage,” commented Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for Marketing, midstream and processing in Equinor. “We experience an increased demand for this service, particularly from large industrial clusters on the European continent”.
The Northern Lights initiative is the transport and storage portion of the larger, full-scale Longship carbon capture and storage (CCS) project launched by the Norwegian government. Phase 1 of Northern Lights will have a storage capacity of up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
According to Equinor, the volumes from Yara will enable the phase I to reach full capacity. The JV is now working to mature phase II for final investment decision to increase the total capacity to around 5-6 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
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