Equinor lets contract for newly funded Northern Lights project
Equinor has let two contracts worth 1.3 billion kroner in connection with the Northern Lights carbon capture and storage project.
Aker Solutions AS subsidiary Kværner AS received a letter of award for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the onshore plant facilities at Energiparken in Øygarden in western Norway. The onshore plant will receive and store liquid CO2 before it is exported through a pump and pipeline system for injection offshore. The value of the contract is estimated at 1.05 billion kroner. Work start-up is expected in January 2021, and completion is planned by first-quarter 2024.
Aker Solutions was let an EPC contract for delivering a subsea injection system for the CO2 well in the North Sea. The contract is awarded as a call-off under the framework agreement signed with Equinor in 2017. The value of the contract is 250 million kroner. The work will start in January 2021 with installation and completion in 2023. The contract also includes options for equipment for future wells.
The pre-fabrication for the onshore facilities will be done at Aker Solutions’ yard at Stord before site installation. The scope includes facilities at jetty for import of CO2 from ships, storage tanks for intermediate storage of CO2, and process systems.
The Northern Lights project is the transport and storage part of Longship, the Norwegian Government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project. Equinor is developing the project together with Shell and Total as equal partners (OGJ Online, May 15, 2020).
Funding for the project was approved by the Norwegian Parliament Dec. 14, 2020 (OGJ Online, Dec. 14, 2020).
Initially, Northern Lights includes capacity to transport, inject, and store up to 1.5 million tonnes/year of CO2. Once the captured onshore, the CO2 will be transported by newly designed ships, injected, and permanently stored 2,600 meters subsea.
Facilities are scheduled to be operational in 2024.