Northern Lights

The Northern Lights Project, a joint venture between Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies, is located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, about 2,600 meters below the seabed. It forms the transport and storage component of Norway’s Longship full-chain CCS program, designed to provide open-access CO₂ storage for industrial emitters across Europe. CO₂ will be captured from sources in Norway, liquefied, and transported by ship to an onshore terminal at Øygarden, before being piped offshore to injection wells drilled into the Johansen Formation. Phase 1, expected to begin operations in 2025, will have the capacity to transport and store 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, with expansion potential to 5–6 million tonnes per year in subsequent phases. The Johansen reservoir and overlying Drake Formation shales provide robust long-term containment, confirmed through extensive appraisal drilling and seismic surveys. Northern Lights is the world’s first cross-border, open-access CO₂ transport and storage network, positioning Norway as a central hub for European decarbonization efforts and providing scalable capacity for industries unable to fully decarbonize through electrification or efficiency measures.