Norwegian carbon dioxide storage company Northern Lights, a joint venture founded by oil firms Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell, has announced a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) scheme in which it will store emissions captured from fertiliser-maker Yara’s Dutch operations. Under the deal, 800 ktCO2/year will be transported on ships from industrial plants in the Netherlands operations into rock formations 2,600 meters beneath Norway’s North Sea ocean floor, starting in early 2025.
The deal is the first commercial agreement Northern Lights has signed and the first commercial agreement on cross-border CO2 transport and storage signed in the world. The parties did not disclose financial details of the deal.
Northern Lights also has preliminary deals to store CO2 from a cement plant and a waste plant that, if confirmed, will fill the project’s phase 1 planned capacity of 1.5 MtCO2/year. Following the Yara deal the joint venture will now work on expansion of its storage capacity to between 5 and 6 MtCO2/year with phase 2, which still requires a final investment decision (FID).