Northern Pioneer, said to be the world's first commercial liquefied CO₂ transport ship, has arrived in Norway.

It should be ready to start operations later this year for the Northern Lights Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project.

The 130-m long vessel is designed to transport 8,000 metric tons of liquefied CO₂, captured from industrial sites in northern Europe, to the Northern Lights reception terminal in Øygarden, Norway.

From there, the CO₂ will head through a subsea pipeline for permanent storage in a reservoir in the Norwegian North Sea, 2,600 m below the seabed.

The ship is the first of four custom designed for CO₂ transport, and ordered by the Northern Lights co-venturers Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies. It will be registered in Norway and managed by Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (“K” LINE).

To date, the joint venture has signed commercial agreements for CO₂ offtake with Yara in the Netherlands and Ørsted in Denmark.

Last year Norway’s government issued four exploration licenses for storing CO₂ subsurface and extended offers for two licenses. When these are finally awarded, there will be 13 active licenses for storing CO₂ on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS).

“The NCS is very attractive for safe CO2 storage," according to Ann Helen Hansen, CCS coordinator at the Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NOD).

She added that this is due largely to a combination of storage experience gained by Equinor at the Sleipner and Snøhvit fields; the maturity of the Norwegian shelf, particularly the North Sea, where much of the data collected over the years is publicly available; and a regulatory framework that offers predictable terms and conditions.

If all current projects go ahead, up to 2 billion mt of CO₂ could be stored on the shelf, the NOD says. However, the final volumes will also depend on issues such as information from future mapping, access to CO₂ in the market and the type of development solutions chosen for projects.