Northern Lights has signed a long-term charter agreement and a shipbuilding contract for a 12,000 m³ liquefied CO2 carrier to support the project’s Phase 2 expansion.
The contracts were marked at a ceremony held on 4 March in Øygarden, Norway, attended by representatives from Northern Lights, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line), MISC Berhad and Dalian Shipbuilding Offshore.
Under the agreement, the vessel will be built under a shipbuilding contract signed with Dalian Shipbuilding Offshore and chartered to Northern Lights by a consortium formed by K Line and MISC. The ship will have a cargo capacity of 12,000m³ and is intended to transport captured CO2 from industrial emitters in Europe to the Northern Lights storage site in Norway.
Delivery of the vessel is scheduled between the second half of 2028 and the first half of 2029. Northern Lights said a second vessel contract will be awarded to the same consortium in April 2026.
The additional vessels form part of Phase 2 of the Northern Lights development, which is designed to increase the project’s transport and storage capacity to more than 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
Northern Lights forms the CO2 transport and storage component of Norway’s Longship carbon capture and storage initiative. The project is jointly owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies. Captured carbon dioxide from industrial facilities in Europe is transported by ship to the receiving terminal at Øygarden before being injected into offshore geological formations beneath the North Sea.
Northern Lights has already signed commercial agreements with several European industrial companies, including fertiliser producer Yara in the Netherlands, renewable energy company Ørsted in Denmark and district heating provider Stockholm Exergi in Sweden.
As part of the ceremony programme, participants visited the Northern Lights CO2 receiving and storage facility at Øygarden and toured Northern Pathfinder, the dedicated liquefied CO2 carrier serving the project’s first phase.
Northern Pathfinder is managed by K Line Energy Shipping (UK), the London-based subsidiary of K Line responsible for ship management of the vessel.
Construction works for Phase 2 infrastructure at the Øygarden terminal are under way. The expansion will allow the facility to handle higher volumes of CO2 delivered from industrial sites across Europe.
Northern Lights said the additional vessels are being introduced in line with customer agreements and the planned increase in transport capacity under Phase 2.
K Line described carbon capture and storage as an important element of global climate strategy. The company said the project would support cooperation between industry participants involved in the transport and storage of liquefied CO2.
It said in a press release: ‘The ‘K’ LINE Group is taking different steps towards its own low-carbon and carbon-free initiatives, and that for society, in accordance with its long-term guidelines concerning the environment, ‘K’ LINE Environmental Vision 2050.’
The additional vessels are expected to enter service from 2028 onwards as Northern Lights expands its CO2 transport and storage capacity.
