Northern Lights (Norway) CCS Enters Commercial Operations — Yara Sluiskil to Store 800,000 tCO₂/yr Starting 2026

The Northern Lights joint venture (Equinor, Shell, TotalEnergies) confirmed it entered full commercial CO₂ transport and storage operations in 2026, following the successful completion of its first CO₂ injection campaign in August 2025 — making it the world's first open-access, third-party CO₂ transport and storage facility. CO₂ is stored 2,600 meters below the North Sea seabed in the Aurora reservoir, where it mineralizes permanently in saline aquifer rock. Phase 1 capacity is 1.5 Mt CO₂/year. Yara's Sluiskil ammonia and fertilizer plant in the Netherlands will become the first major commercial customer, capturing and liquefying up to 800,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year from fertilizer production — then shipping it via dedicated vessels to Northern Lights' onshore receiving terminal at Øygarden, Norway, for permanent subsea storage. Over a 15-year contract period, this represents up to 12 million tonnes of permanently stored CO₂. The project demonstrates that industrial-scale carbon capture from hard-to-abate sectors (fertilizer, steel, cement) can be commercially viable when paired with dedicated transport and storage infrastructure.