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Ledger 1 : 33 — For each dollar financing nature-based solutions in 2023, about $33 financed activities harmful to nature. (UNEP)
Cases / Carbon capture and climate intervention · Norway · 1991–2025

Norway Longship and Northern Lights CCS; Sleipner

Nature's voice · report
No measurement of the harm done to me here is on record.
Did nature suffer? Not measured.
Not on record
  • The record does not name which of my species, waters, soils or forests were harmed.
What the record lacks: 2 none on record · 5 insufficient · 1 not measured See the gaps

Norway funds Longship, a carbon capture and storage chain whose Northern Lights storage site, owned by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, began injecting carbon dioxide in August 2025. The Sleipner field has reportedly stored carbon dioxide under the seabed since 1996.

1.5 Mt/yrNorthern Lights phase 1 injection capacity
Per Maritime Executive, 25 August 2025; the same source gives 5 Mt/yr in 2028 with EU funding.

Status As of August 2025: Northern Lights has injected its first carbon dioxide; no ecological evaluation found.

What?
Norway's Longship carbon capture and storage chain, with the Northern Lights storage site. Maritime Executive
Where?
Offshore Norway.
When?
First injection at Northern Lights in August 2025. Maritime Executive
Who?
Gained
  • Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, as Northern Lights partners — Own the storage site that began injecting in August 2025.
Lost
None on record
Harmed
None on record
Why?
The sources reviewed state no purpose beyond carbon storage.
How?
Carbon dioxide is injected into subsea storage. Maritime Executive
6 of 6 questions answered from the record

What happened

The record, in order.

Northern Lights is the storage component of Longship, Norway's carbon capture and storage chain. It is a partnership of Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies. It injected its first carbon dioxide in August 2025. Maritime Executive reported a first-phase capacity of 1.5 million tonnes a year, rising to 5 million tonnes a year in 2028 with EU funding.

Two further accounts are known only from secondary summaries and have not been independently verified. One is a Norwegian government statement on Longship, reported to give a 2020 total cost estimate of NOK 25.1 billion, of which the state would bear NOK 16.8 billion. The other is an engineering case study of Sleipner, reported to say that Norway placed a carbon tax on offshore oil and gas production in 1991 and that Statoil (now Equinor) then began injecting carbon dioxide from the Sleipner field into the Utsira saline formation, because storage cost less than the tax.

  1. 2025Northern Lights injects first carbon dioxide (August)

How it looked

What was shown, beside what was recorded.

Shown

  • Northern Lights was reported as injecting carbon dioxide into subsea storage, with a first-phase capacity of 1.5 million tonnes a year and 5 million tonnes a year planned for 2028 with EU funding.
    Maritime Executive · Maritime Executive

Recorded

In court and with insurers

Every proceeding and every insurer decision on record.

Lawsuits and rulings

No court case on record. No court has ruled on this case.

Insurers

No insurer decision on record.

What nature saw

Outcomes measured on the ground, and nature's note.

Nature's report opens this page. Below: further outcomes measured on the ground.

Northern Lights phase 1 capacity
1.5 Mt/yr
Reported by Maritime Executive, August 2025
Independent ecological evaluation
Not on record
The sources reviewed do not describe one

What we don't know

Undisclosed, unproven, untried: recorded as data.
No court caseNo independent ecological evaluation

Nature

  • Not measured Harm to nature: No independent ecological evaluation is on record.

Court

Figures

  • Insufficient Project cost: Longship estimated total cost; secondary report only.
  • Insufficient State share cost: State share of Longship estimate; secondary report only.

Record

  • Insufficient Reported but not independently verified: Sleipner has stored about 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year since 1996 and about 16 million tonnes by 2016, after Norway's 1991 offshore carbon tax (source: a reports of an Institution of Civil Engineers case study).
  • Insufficient Reported but not independently verified: Longship's 2020 cost estimate of NOK 25.1 billion, with a state share of NOK 16.8 billion (about two-thirds).
  • Insufficient Reported but not independently verified: IEEFA wrote that unexpected subsurface problems occurred at Sleipner and Snohvit.
  • None on record The sources reviewed give no ecological evaluation of the storage sites.

Did the harm stop?

Not applicable: the sources reviewed describe storage operations, not a harm that stopped.

Who paid?

Reported, not independently verified: the Norwegian state would bear about two-thirds of Longship's estimated cost.

Sources

Voices on record: — Company or project✓ Government and regulators— Courts✓ Press and investigations— Communities and civil society✓ Researchers

Government and regulators

Press and investigations

Researchers

Connected cases

Related matters, and cases linked to this one through the same organisations, with the role each played in both.
Terms used on this page

Law and courts

Arbitration
A private dispute process in which an appointed arbitrator, instead of a court, decides the case.

Insurance

Underwriter
An insurer, or a person at an insurer, who assesses a risk and decides whether and on what terms to insure it.
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