The Financial Times has nominated Wiersholm in the category "Practice of Law: Overcoming barriers to investment & financing" for the firm's work on Norway's first-of-a-kind full-scale carbon capture and storage chain (CCS) project. The Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Europe Awards 2022 ceremony will be held in London on 13 October.

A Wiersholm team led by Sondre Dyrland has been assisting the Norwegian government (Ministry of Petroleum and Energy) and the Northern Lights joint venture on different elements of the renowned carbon capture and storage project “Longship”: “We highly appreciate this nomination and see it as recognition of the innovative legal work it has required to realise this ground breaking project,” Dyrland comments on the FT Innovative Lawyers nomination.

Longship is a full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project that will involve the capture of CO₂ from industrial sources, as well as transport and safe storage of CO₂. CO₂ will be captured at Norcem’s cement factory in Brevik and Hafslund Oslo Celcio’s waste incineration plant in Oslo. Liquefied CO₂ will then be collected and transported by ships.

The transport and storage is the responsibility of Northern Lights, a joint venture between Equinor, Shell and Total. Liquid CO₂ will be transported to a terminal at Øygarden in Vestland County. From there, CO₂ will be pumped through a pipeline and stored safely in a reservoir 2600 meters below the seabed.

Northern Lights is developing the world’s first open-source CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure. Establishing a commercial CCS market, Northern Lights will deliver carbon transport and storage as a service. In August, Northern Lights announced its first commercial contract with Yara to store 800.000 tonnes CO₂ annually.

Phase one of the project will be operational in 2024 with a storage capacity of 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. For phase two of the development, the ambition is to expand capacity with another 3.5 million tonnes to meet the increasing market demand for these services in the coming years.

Dyrland and his team supported the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in developing the concept and contractual framework for the world’s first complete value chain for commercial CCS, the Longship project, which was labelled by previous prime minister Erna Solberg as Norway’s largest ever industrial climate project. As legal advisors to the Northern Lights joint venture, the Wiersholm team has assisted in developing new contractual concepts, mechanisms and solutions for the commercial storage of CO₂.

Wiersholm is the only Norwegian law firm to be shortlisted for FT Innovative Lawyers Europe Awards 2022.

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