Equinor awards ABL warranty role for Northern Lights expansion
Equinor has awarded energy and marine consultancy ABL a contract to provide marine warranty survey (MWS) services for Phase 2 of the Northern Lights carbon transport and storage project offshore Norway, as the development moves into its next expansion stage.
Northern Lights is part of Norway’s Longship full-scale carbon capture and storage initiative and is designed to transport and permanently store captured CO₂ from Norwegian and European industrial sources. The project’s first phase, which began operations in summer 2025, established infrastructure for receiving and injecting up to 1.5 million tonnes per year of CO₂ based on the design framework developed by Gassnova SF.
With Phase 2, Equinor and its partners in the Northern Lights joint venture plan to expand storage capacity to at least 5 million tonnes per year, supported by a commercially based investment model intended to meet rising demand from hard-to-abate industrial emitters across Europe. The expanded system will continue to allow unallocated capacity to be accessed by additional national and international capture projects.
Under the contract, ABL’s Norway-based team in Stavanger will deliver marine verification and warranty services supporting offshore construction and installation activities associated with the CO₂ transport and storage expansion. The scope includes site attendances, marine surveys, and the technical review and approval of project and procedural documentation for warranted operations.
“This is an important climate initiative that any industry player would be proud to be part of," said Subbi Nookala, ABL’s country manager in Norway. "Northern Lights is an important milestone in energy transition of Norway and Europe and offers an open-source facility to decarbonise hard to abate industrial emitters. We have delivered marine warranty survey support to clients on the Norwegian continental shelf since the 1980s and look forward to applying this competence to this exciting project too."
