EUR 656m Norway plan to treble capacity at milestone CCS project

Northern Lights -The CO2 receiving facility in Øygarden, part of the Longship supply chain project.

Norway’s energy ministry has approved a EUR 656m plan to more than treble the storage capacity at its first large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) site in the North Sea to 5m tonnes a year, it said on Tuesday.

The news came on the same day the landmark Longship CCS project went into official operation. It includes CO2 capture from two industrial sites in southeastern Norway, transport to the North Sea and underground storage at a site that currently has 1.5mt of annual storage capacity, the ministry said in a statement.

The first shipment of CO2 was transported from Heidelberg’s cement factory in Brevik earlier this month. The CO2 has now been transferred to storage tanks and will be injected into the Northern Lights storage site in early August, it added.

"Technological breakthrough”

“Longship demonstrates that it is possible to cut emissions from the industry and waste in a safe and effective way. This is a technological breakthrough and a milestone in Norway’s climate efforts,” said energy minister Terje Aasland.

“We have built a complete value chain for CO2 management that will have significant impact far beyond our borders,” he added.

The Northern Lights site – owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies – has already agreed to store carbon from industrial sites in Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark in addition to the two Norwegian sites.

The price of the expansion is estimated at NOK 7.5bn (EUR 656m), of which the European Commission will cover EUR 131m.

EUR 1 = NOK 11.44

source: Montel News