Wednesday 8 December 2021

Ørsted, together with Neptune Energy and Goal7, have been awarded £239,000 from the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) to fund a study into the potential use of renewable energy to provide power to a gas-producing offshore platform.

The research will use a generic offshore wind farm and oil and gas facility in the North Sea to explore the optimal technical design to provide a stable and reliable power supply from an offshore wind farm. This would be an important step towards decarbonising Oil and Gas production and would make a significant contribution to Net Zero in line with the commitments made at COP26 and the emission reduction commitments under the North Sea Transition Deal.

The four-month feasibility study will also investigate the commercial and consenting solutions for establishing an electrical connection between an offshore wind farm and an offshore O&G installation. The aim is to provide a solution that could be scaled, replicated and applied to any wind farm and platform in proximity to one another.

The funding has been secured as part of the OGA’s Decarbonisation Competition for the electrification of offshore O&G installations, which looks at ways to accelerate the electrification of offshore oil and gas installations and can help deliver the decarbonisation required as part of the North Sea Transition Deal, which has set emissions reduction targets to achieve net zero by 2050 with interim reduction targets of 10% by 2025; 25% by 2027; 50% by 2030.

According to the OGA, power generation accounts for around two thirds of oil and gas production emissions. It is anticipated that powering installations using electricity either from a cable to the shore or from a nearby windfarm could lead to 2-3Mtpa CO2 emissions reductions, which is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions from households in a city the size of Liverpool.

Platform electrification is a key component of the OGA’s vision for an integrated energy basin. The OGA’s Energy Integration Report found that the UK Continental Shelf could (through a mix of platform electrification, carbon capture and storage, offshore wind and hydrogen) absorb up to 60% of the UK’s entire CO2 abatement needed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Ørsted and Neptune are also collaborating on a wider basis, facilitated by Goal7 to investigate how providing electricity from offshore wind could not only support significant decarbonisation of oil and gas production but also be the first step towards the full integration of energy systems that includes offshore low-carbon hydrogen production.