Power Cable Being Installed at Johan Sverdrup Makes Field Best in Class for CO2 Emissions
Tuesday 15 May 2018
On Wednesday 9th May, 2018, the cable-laying vessel NKT Victoria began laying the cables that will supply the Johan Sverdrup field with power from shore.
The starting point was the Johan Sverdrup converter station at Haugsneset near Kårstø, and by the end of May the vessel will have laid nearly 200 kilometres of power cables out to the field in the North Sea.
Bundled with the power cables, a fibre-optic cable will once installed ensure good communication and enable monitoring and, when required, remote control of parts of the Johan Sverdrup field’s operations from shore.
The power cables will help make Johan Sverdrup one of the most carbon-efficient oil and gas fields in the world. Estimated at just 0.5 kg of CO2 per barrel, the emissions from Johan Sverdrup are about 20 times lower than the average on the Norwegian continental shelf, and 30 times lower than the international average.
This makes Johan Sverdrup a key project to help deliver on Statoil’s ambition of reducing annual carbon emissions by 3 million tonnes by 2030, compared with the estimated emissions.
The CO2 emissions avoided as a result of Johan Sverdrup using power from shore add up to more than 400,000 tonnes of C02 per year, equivalent to the emissions of some 200,000 cars each year.
Several additional measures have been implemented to further reduce emissions during the Johan Sverdrup development. The cable-laying vessel NKT Victoria was designed to be supplied with power from shore while in harbour.
The mobile accommodation vessel Haven, in use at the field from June onwards, has also been modified to utilise power from shore while in service at the Johan Sverdrup field. And based on current plans, the Johan Sverdrup field will be powered from shore already this autumn so that all the field’s power needs during the remaining hook-up and finalisation phase will be met with electricity supplied from shore.
After the cables reach the Johan Sverdrup field at the end of May, the next step will be to pull the cables in to the riser platform, where the converter station for the first phase of the development is located. Then the cables will be connected, before preparations and testing of the system start. And in the autumn of 2018, the Johan Sverdrup field should be ready to be powered with electricity from shore.
After the start-up of the second phase of the development in 2022, the Johan Sverdrup field will also enable power from shore to reach the remaining fields on the Utsira High – Edvard Grieg, Gina Krog and Ivar Aasen.