Friday 24 June 2022

Orcadian Energy (AIM:ORCA), the low-emissions North Sea oil and gas development company, is pleased to announce that the North Sea Transition Authority (“NSTA”) published, this morning, the full report prepared by the Company and its partners, for the Platform Electrification competition launched in September 2021.

The competition sought electrification concepts that could minimise carbon emissions for existing North Sea platforms. “Orcadian’s Microgrid Concept” aims to dramatically cut carbon emissions, ensuring that the oil and gas that features in our future energy mix is as sustainable as possible. The full report and a summary are available from the Company’s website.

Background

As announced on 9 May 2022, Orcadian and its consortium partners have designed what they believe is a viable, reliable, off-grid option for powering North Sea platforms. The approach is founded on power from floating wind turbines, supported by energy efficient and highly responsive gas-powered generators with enough battery power to maintain a reliable supply. Floating distribution hubs will be used to collect the power from the wind turbines and distribute power to the operators’ platforms through a network of cables. The Directors believe this design can be more effective and cost substantially less than cable from shore solutions, with a potential to deliver an earlier and deeper cut to emissions. The Directors also believe future operating costs can be substantially reduced with this solution, which could enable mature fields to keep producing longer and facilitate development of satellite discoveries with minimised emissions. All of these outcomes would enhance the UK’s energy security and would ensure that emissions from North Sea oil and gas production remain world leading.

Advantages of the Orcadian approach include:

Emissions reductions – approaching an estimated 80% reduction for offshore facilities.

Lower costs – potential saving of almost US$2 billion and more than 25% cheaper compared to a solution that uses power from the UK grid, when capital and ten years of operating costs are included, for a subset of platforms.

A practical way for operators to meet their North Sea Transition Deal commitments in terms of both the emission reduction targets and timeframe.

Could be delivered quickly, and in phases, which allows a staged deployment with a steadily improving reduction in emissions.

Opportunities for the core infrastructure to be re-used or redeployed – which could provide legacy infrastructure for the grid and/or other users.

The full report, as well as the list of documents that can be downloaded, is available on the company’s website: https://orcadian.energy/esg/ne...

Steve Brown, Orcadian’s CEO, said:

“The report we have produced with our partners provides a solution that ensures that oil and gas can be produced with much lower emissions and in line the North Sea Transition Deal agreed with Government in 2021. Oil and gas will remain an important part of the energy mix and the industry aims to deliver that energy in the cleanest way possible. We look forward to working with NSTA, the oilfield operators, as well as our partners to deliver this concept as a reality on the UKCS.”