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18.11.2024

TCM Employees Experience Northern Lights Up Close

“As exciting and beautiful as the Northern Lights in the sky,” said one of the employees from Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) after visiting the Northern Lights facility in Øygarden, just outside Bergen.

At the end of September, Energy Minister Terje Aasland inaugurated, Northern Lights, the world’s first commercial facility for the transport and permanent storage of CO₂ beneath the seabed. On November 15, nearly 20 TCM employees had the chance to visit this groundbreaking facility and see its operations in action. While TCM focuses on developing and testing CO₂ capture technology, the visit offered insight into the next critical steps in the value chain—transport and storage—as part of Norway’s flagship Longship project.

TCM employees photographed in front of the tanks at Northern Lights, which can store 8,500 cubic meters of CO₂ before being transported via pipeline to a reservoir beneath the seabed in the North Sea.
This is where specially built ships will dock to deliver CO₂ from Heidelberg Materials in Brevik, as well as from Ørsted in Denmark and Yara in the Netherlands.
The administration building at Northern Lights is built on stilts for safety reasons, ensuring that any potential CO₂ leakage would not pose a risk to those inside the building.

Fully Operational by Next Year

The Longship project is set to become fully operational next year when the CO₂ capture facility at Heidelberg Materials in Brevik is completed in 2025. The capture technology, extensively tested at TCM, will enable the facility to collect around 400,000 tons of CO₂ annually. The captured CO₂ will then be transported by specially built ships to Øygarden, where it will enter pipelines stretching 110 kilometers out into the North Sea. From there, it will be safely and permanently stored in a reservoir located 2,600 meters below the seabed.

Scaling Up for the Future

Northern Lights will play a key role in transporting liquid CO₂ by ship from both Norwegian and European sources to Øygarden. During the first phase, the facility has the capacity to store 1.5 million tons of CO₂ annually. However, the pipeline from the onshore terminal to the reservoir is designed to accommodate up to 5 million tons. The project aims to gradually scale capacity to 5 million tons per year through phased expansions, aligned with growing demand from industries in Norway and Europe.

The facility’s owners—Equinor, Shell, and Total Energies—are expected to make a decision by February next year regarding a potential investment in Phase 2 of the project, which could further expand the scope and impact of this pioneering CO₂ storage initiative.

In the auditorium at Northern Lights, the guests from TCM received a detailed presentation before touring the facility.