Aker BP and Höegh Evi secure €223 million in EU funding for Atlas CO2 project

Aker BP and Höegh Evi have received €223 million from the European Union's Innovation Fund to develop the Atlas Project, a large-scale CO2 capture, transport and storage network that will connect European industry with a permanent storage site on the Norwegian continental shelf.

The scheme combines regional CO2 aggregation at export hubs near industrial clusters with large-scale shipping via dedicated low-pressure vessels. The CO2 will be transported to the storage site in the Norwegian North Sea, within license EXL011 operated by Aker BP (80%, with ORLEN Upstream Norway holding the remaining 20% stake), where it will be injected through subsea infrastructure into a saline aquifer more than 2,000 meters below the seabed.

Atlas has a design capacity of 6 million tonnes of CO2 per year, with potential to expand beyond 10 million tonnes as the European CCS market grows. The project was recognized in April 2026 as an EU Project of Mutual Interest (PMI 13.17) as cross-border CO2 infrastructure, and is currently in the Select phase, with final investment decision expected in 2028 and first CO2 injection projected from 2031.

According to EU documentation, the project appears under the name ASTOR (ATLAS STORAGE), with Aker BP ASA as coordinator, and was one of 77 net-zero technology projects selected as part of a total package of €3.4 billion from the Innovation Fund. ASTOR has been invited to the grant agreement preparation stage, where the funding contract, budget, timeline and technical and financial obligations still need to be defined, a process expected to conclude in the first quarter of 2027.

Nils Jakob Hasle, Executive Vice President of Clean Energy at Höegh Evi, noted that the regional aggregation and low-pressure shipping model allows industrial regions to be efficiently connected to permanent CO2 storage, while Ørjan Jentoft, CCS asset manager at Aker BP, highlighted Europe's need for safe and cost-effective storage. In the same funding round, Italy's Eni also secured funding for a scheme aimed at sequestering CO2 in the Mediterranean.