France-based TotalEnergies has announced an innovative pilot project aimed at decarbonising one of its offshore platforms in the UK North Sea.
The Culzean platform is located about 135 miles off Scotland’s eastern coast, where it produces some 550 million cubic meters of gas each day – enough to meet about 5% of the UK’s demand for gas.
It is already one of TotalEnergies’ flagship platforms for its digital solutions, innovative technologies and reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
To reduce the platform’s GHG emissions further, TotalEnergies, which makes the Total metalworking range, will deploy a floating wind turbine a little over a mile west of the platform. When it becomes operational by the end of next year, the 3 MW of clean electricity it will generate will meet 20% of the platform’s demand.
TotalEnergies’ Chief Technology Officer, Marie-Noelle Semeria, said that the project had the goal of:
“…proving the concept of hybridisation of power generation on an offshore facility, by integrating the generation of renewable electricity from a floating wind turbine with the existing power generation from gas turbines. It also aims at qualifying a promising floater design for the future of floating offshore wind.”
Ocergy has designed a light, modular floater hull that is semi-submersible for the turbine to be installed upon. TotalEnergies says this will reduce costs and allow for faster assembly.
Crown Estate Scotland selected the project as part of its Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas (INTOG) leasing round, which aims to encourage the decarbonisation of oil and gas platforms.
