Northern Lights JV DA has awarded Global Maritime a marine warranty surveying contract for its planned CO2 transportation and storage infrastructure. The JV consists of Equinor ASA, Shell PLC, and TotalEnergies SE.
Equinor last year awarded an engineering, procurement, construction, and installation contract for Northern Lights to Subsea 7 SA and a subsea control system contract for the project’s Oseberg A platform to Aibel AS (OGJ Online, Jan. 28, 2021).
Northern Lights is developing infrastructure that will transport CO2 by ship from capture sites across Europe to a terminal in western Norway for intermediate storage, before transporting it by pipeline for permanent storage in Johansen formation, 2,600 m under the Norwegian North Sea’s bed. This infrastructure will enable the mitigation of industrial process emissions for which there is currently no scalable solution, the JV said.
The first development phase of Northern Lights, supported by Norwegian authorities, will be completed by mid-2024, and be able to store 1.5 million tonnes/year of CO2, according to the JV. As demand from industrial sectors in Europe grows, Northern Lights will increase storage capacity. Construction of an onshore receiving terminal in Øygarden, Norway, is under way.
The European Union (EU) has designated Northern Lights a project of common interest (PCI). Norway, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden are all promoting Northern Lights. PCI projects and participants can benefit from simplified permitting and the right to apply for EU funding from the Connecting Europe Facility program.
