Sarens Moves Cargo for CSS Project in Norway

Belgium-headquartered heavy-lift specialist Sarens was recently called into action to move 12 carbon dioxide tanks for Norway’s “pivotal” Northern Lights carbon capture and storage, or CSS project.

The project, part of the Norwegian government’s full-scale Longship CSS initiative, aims to capture CO2 from industrial sources including cement and waste-to-energy and ship it – in liquid form – to a subsea site some 2-3 kilometres beneath the North Sea seabed for safe and permanent storage.

According to Northern Lights, a joint venture between Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell responsible for the transport and storage units of the project, the initiative will be the world’s first ever cross-border, open-source CO2 transport and storage infrastructure network. Phase one is slated for completion in mid-2024 with a capacity of 1.5 million tonnes per year of CO2.

To carry out the move of the 35-metre, 230-tonne tanks, Sarens deployed 24-axlew K24ST SPMTs and two Maxi PPUs. All the equipment was mobilised to the site at the Kollsnes natural gas processing plant in Norway via four trucks and required a half day of rigging to prepare for transport. The SPMTs arrived in mid-November and will remain on-site through mid-April.

According to Sarens, load capacity at the site was “critical”, with maximum weight kept to below five tonnes per square metre. Sarens SPMTs transported each tank from the quayside to the storage area, a distance of about 600 metres.

The tanks were moved along two lines of 12-axle SPMTs with two power packs. The components were carried at a certain height to get into the Energiparken Rogn jobsite through fixed entry gates. For this reason, high cribbing on the trailers was required, Sarens said.

The move, carried out for Aker Solutions, also involved Netherlands-based carrier Roll Group.

“The weather in Norway at this time of year can often be windy and unpredictable, but the team was able to complete the operation with perseverance, patience and skill,” the company said in a statement.

CCS is tipped to be a major source of cargo-carrying opportunities for breakbulk and project cargo in the coming years. The technique is deployed in power plants and other industrial facilities to trap and compress CO2 before transporting it to special sites for underground or subsea storage.

Large-scale CSS projects such as Longship, require breakbulk support to transport and install pipelines, storage tanks, giant compressors, processing equipment, ship-handling facilities and other oversized components.


Sarens and Roll Group will be exhibiting at Breakbulk Europe 2023, taking place on 6-8 June at Rotterdam Ahoy in the Netherlands. Aker Solutions, Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell are members of the Breakbulk Global Shipper Network, a worldwide network of shippers involved in the engineering, manufacturing and production of project cargo.