Plug-In Platforms: The Push for Offshore Electrification

Abstract

The energy transition march toward net zero moves to different beats all around the world. With much of the initial focus on industry and what it can do to help curb CO2 emissions, attention soon turns to the worst offenders. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2020, one quarter of all CO2 emissions came from electricity generation. Approximately 60% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, mostly coal and natural gas. Coming in second, at 24%, was industry. Greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from industry primarily come from burning fossil fuels for energy, as well as GHG emissions from certain chemical reactions necessary to produce goods from raw materials. While these numbers pertain to the US, they ring mostly true around the globe where across the Atlantic Ocean some oil and gas companies are facing the challenge on both fronts by working to eliminate gas-fired turbines that generate electricity offshore. No country has done more with offshore electrification to date than Norway. Oil and gas extraction on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) accounts for 27% of the country’s total CO2 emissions. Norway’s top producer Equinor has been on the forefront of offshore electrification for almost 3 decades. Electrification requires an efficient solution to convert electric power transmitted to an offshore field into mechanical motion to operate components. Size, weight, efficiency, cost, and equipment availability play key factors in determining the outcome. Historically, the solution has been the use of shore power but today, innovative approaches can be implemented using renewable sources. “The Norwegian Climate Action Plan for 2021 to 2030 came one-and-a-half year ago, where the previous government, then with actually strong support from most politicians, said that the CO2 tax shall rise to NOK 2,000 ($200) per tonne within 2030,” explained Simen Moxnes, senior advisor, new energy systems, Climate Initiative Norway for Equinor. “CO2 tax is a quite strong signal because then abatement projects that earlier had negative net present value suddenly get profitable since we don’t have to pay that tax if we can avoid emissions. Then we got the new government one year ago and, in their platform, they said that the target of 40% for oil and gas industry shall be increased to 50%. We have a quite large toolbox to obtain this. Operational measures that need energy efficiency is the go-to solution first. The best energy is the energy we don’t use.” Moxnes added, “We also have several other technologies developed like carbon capture and storage on brownfield platforms. These have proved to be very difficult to implement due to weight and space limitations. Weight and space on platforms are a scarce quality resource. Even these compact plants are quite weight intensive. In addition, you must install big equipment close to exhaust channels to catch the flue gas, and a lot of the brownfield projects have really struggled with that. For greenfield it’s much simpler.”