Northern Lights achieves first injection, storage of CO2 volumes in North Sea

The Northern Lights Joint Venture successfully injected CO2 into a seabed reservoir, marking the official operational start of the third-party CO2 transport and storage project.

Aug. 25, 2025

2 min read

The Northern Lights Carbon Capture and Storage facilities at Øygarden outside of Bergen.

The Northern Lights Joint Venture, comprised of Equinor, Shell plc, and TotalEnergies, has injected and stored the first volumes of CO₂ into the reservoir 2.6 m under the seabed and 100 km off the coast of Western Norway.

The CO₂is transported from Heidelberg Materials’ cement factory in Brevik to Øygarden via two 130-m-long vessels (Northern Pathfinder and Northern Pioneer) designed by Shell engineers. The liquefied-carbon carriers are each capable of transporting 7,500 cu m of CO₂ in a single trip, according to Shell.

The CO₂ is then offloaded and transported through a 100-km pipeline and injected into the Aurora reservoir.

Heidelberg Materials is expected to capture around 400,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of CO₂from its cement factory in Brevik, two hours south of Oslo, accounting for about half the plant’s total emissions, according to Shell.

Equinor, as the Technical Service Provider (TSP), has been responsible for the construction of the Øygarden receiving infrastructure and the offshore infrastructure on behalf of the joint venture. Equinor also will have operational responsibility of the CO₂ plant.

The start of CO₂ injection completes the first phase of the development, which has a total capacity of 1.5 million tpy of CO₂. The project's industrial customers include Hafslund Celsio and Heidelberg Materials in Norway, Yara in the Netherlands, and Ørsted in Denmark.

In March, the owners of Northern Lights made the final investment decision for Phase 2 of the development, which will increase transport and storage capacity to a minimum of 5 million tpy of CO₂from 2028.

FID for Phase 2 followed the signing of an agreement to transport and store up to 900,000 tonnes/year of CO₂ from Stockholm Exergi.

The expansion of Northern Lights builds on existing infrastructure and includes additional onshore storage tanks, a new jetty, and additional injection wells. Development of the second phase is under way, with the delivery of nine new CO₂ storage tanks at the Øygarden site this summer, Equinor said.