Northern Lights JV, Open-Access CO2 Receiving Terminal and Offshore Storage (Longship, Norway)

Some industrial emissions are hard to abate, and ports that serve industrial clusters may need to handle captured CO2 as a cargo. Northern Lights is a joint venture owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies. It develops and operates CO2 transport and storage facilities, open to third parties, as part of Longship, the Norwegian Government's full-scale carbon capture and storage project (Northern Lights, n.d.a). CCS Norway, developed by the state enterprise Gassnova, describes the Brevik plant of Heidelberg Materials as the first cement factory equipped with CO2 capture, as part of Longship (Gassnova, n.d.a).

Approach

Coastal receiving terminal. The CO2 receiving terminal is in the Energiparken industrial area in Øygarden (Northern Lights, n.d.b). CO2 arriving by ship is held in pressure tanks and then pumped offshore through a pipeline to an injection well. The terminal was designed to receive two tankers at a time (Gassnova, n.d.b).

Permanent geological storage. Equinor was granted permission in January 2019 to develop the Aurora storage site on behalf of Northern Lights, south of the Troll field and west of Bergen (Gassnova, n.d.b). CO2 moves from the terminal through a 100-kilometre pipeline and is stored 2,600 metres below the seabed (Northern Lights, 2026b).

Monitoring. Northern Lights plans a monitoring system similar to the one used for many years at the Sleipner and Snøhvit storage fields (Gassnova, n.d.b).

Open access and phased growth. Phase 2 aims to raise capacity from 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year to more than 5 million tonnes by 2028, with support from the EU Connecting Europe Facility. It adds onshore storage tanks, pumps and a new jetty, and the fleet grows from four to eight dedicated CO2 ships (Northern Lights, 2026a).

Several emitters, including biogenic CO2. Northern Lights receives biogenic CO2 captured at the Veas wastewater plant near Oslo, under an agreement for up to 7,000 tonnes per year (Northern Lights, 2026b). This is agreement capacity, not measured annual storage, and biogenic CO2 storage is distinct from storing fossil CO2.

Results

Storage operations started in August 2025, when the first CO2 was sent through the pipeline and injected into the Aurora reservoir (Northern Lights, 2026b). Five industrial emitters in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark have long-term agreements, and onshore Phase 2 construction started in August 2025. New ships are due for delivery between 2028 and 2029 (Northern Lights, 2026a).