Yara International ASA, Oslo, and Northern Lights JV DA, the transport and storage part of the Norwegian government’s Longship project, have inked an agreement on the main commercial terms to transport CO2 captured from the Yara Sluiskil plant in the Netherlands and permanently store it under the seabed off the coast of western Norway.

When the final contractual details are firmed up, the deal will be the first ever cross-border CO2 transport and storage agreement, Yara said in an Aug. 29 statement. The first mt of CO2are expected to be shipped from early 2025.

From early 2025, 800,000 mt of pure CO2 will be captured, compressed, and liquefied in the Netherlands, and then transported to the Northern Lights’ store at 2,600 meters under the seabed off the coast of Øygarden.

Yara said the agreement would set the standard for other industrial companies across Europe looking to use Northern Lights – and other emerging CO2 transport options and stores in the North Sea – as a key part of their decarbonization strategies.

Yara is Northern Lights’ first commercial customer.

Northern Lights is developing an infrastructure to transport CO2 from industrial emitters by ship to a receiving terminal in western Norway for immediate storage before being transported by pipeline for permanent storage in a geological reservoir 2,600 meters under the seabed. The facilities are under construction, and operations are scheduled to start in 2024.

The company is an incorporated general partnership with shared liability owned by Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor, Shell, and France’s TotalEnergies.

Longship is the Norwegian government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project.