Microsoft has signed a strategic agreement with Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor to support the development of CO2 transport and storage value chains, as well as CO2 removal credits, in Northwestern Europe and the US.

Commenting on the announcement on LinkedIn, Grete Tveit, SVP, Equinor, said: “Our companies share strong ambitions within these areas. Equinor, as a major player in CO2 transport and storage, and Microsoft, as the world’s leading procurer of CDR credits that can also provide the end-to-end digital backbone to track molecules from capture sites to permanent storage.”

The companies aim to build on a previous partnership, which saw Microsoft commit to utilizing the Northern Lights carbon capture project, a joint venture between Equinor, TotalEnergies, and Shell.

Formed back in 2017, the project is the world’s first cross-border CO2 transport and storage facility. Located in the Norwegian North Sea, the facility is part of Longship, the Norwegian Government’s full-scale carbon capture and storage project.

Longship will capture CO2 from industrial sources in the Oslo-fjord region and ship the liquid from the industrial capture sites to an onshore terminal on the western coast of Norway. Subsequently, the liquified CO2 will be transported through a pipeline to an offshore subsea location in the North Sea, where it will be permanently stored.

The Northern Lights facility is responsible for the transport and storage components of the project. The JV initially partnered with Microsoft in 2020 as part of a technology collaboration aimed at integrating Microsoft’s digital expertise into the project. In addition, Microsoft committed to using the project as its storage partner for several Microsoft carbon removal offtakes in Europe.

This includes a recent 1.1 million-ton carbon credit purchase that Microsoft announced in July with Hafslund Celsio, an energy-from-waste and carbon capture and storage (CCS) firm. When operational, the CCS system is expected to capture 400,000 tons of CO2 annually, with the captured CO2 subsequently transported to the Northern Lights carbon storage facility for permanent storage in a reservoir 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) below the seabed in the North Sea.

Equinor migrated its systems to Microsoft Azure in 2019, following the launch of a new cloud region by Microsoft in Norway.