OSLO, SEPT 26 – Norway is scheduled to inaugurate the gateway to a huge undersea storage chest for carbon dioxide (CO2) today, a key step ahead of opening what operators say will be the first commercial service offering CO2 transport and storage.
The Northern Lights project plans to take captured CO2 emissions from factory chimneys in Europe and inject them into geological reservoirs under the seabed.
The aim is to prevent those emissions from being released into the atmosphere, thus helping to stop climate change.
On the island of Oygarden, a milestone was celebrated today with the inauguration of a terminal built on the North Sea coast, with gleaming storage tanks jutting into the sky.
It is there that the liquid CO2 will be transported by ship, then injected through a long pipe to the seabed, at a depth of around 2.6 kilometers, for permanent storage.
The facility, which is a joint venture between Norwegian oil giant Equinor, Anglo-Dutch Shell, and France’s TotalEnergies, is expected to receive its first shipment of CO2 for burial in 2025.
It will have an initial capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year, before being increased to five million tonnes in a second phase if there is sufficient demand.
“Our main goal is to demonstrate that a chain of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is feasible,” Northern Lights managing director Tim Heijn told AFP.
“It can have a real impact on the CO2 balance and help achieve climate targets,” he added. – AFP
