SSE and Equinor developing plans for hydrogen storage in West Yorkshire

 SSE Thermal and Equinor are developing plans for one of the world’s largest hydrogen storage facilities at their existing Aldbrough site on the East Yorkshire coast. The facility could be storing low-carbon hydrogen as early as 2028.

The existing Aldbrough Gas Storage facility, which was commissioned in 2011, is co-owned by SSE Thermal and Equinor, and consists of nine underground salt caverns, each roughly the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Upgrading the site to store hydrogen would involve converting the existing caverns or creating new purpose-built caverns to store the low-carbon fuel.

With an initial expected capacity of at least 320GWh, Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage would be significantly larger than any hydrogen storage facility in operation in the world today. The Aldbrough site is ideally located to store the low-carbon hydrogen set to be produced and used in the Humber region.

Hydrogen storage will be vital in creating a large-scale hydrogen economy in the UK and balancing the overall energy system by providing back up where large proportions of energy are produced from renewable power. As increasing amounts of hydrogen are produced both from offshore wind power, known as ‘green hydrogen’, and from natural gas with carbon capture and storage, known as ‘blue hydrogen’, facilities such as Aldbrough will provide storage for low-carbon energy.

Equinor has announced its intention to develop 1.8GW of ‘blue hydrogen’ production in the region starting with its 0.6GW H2H Saltend project which will supply low-carbon hydrogen to local industry and power from the mid-2020s. This will be followed by a 1.2GW production facility to supply the Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, proposed by SSE Thermal and Equinor as the world’s first 100% hydrogen-fired power station, before the end of the decade.

SSE Thermal and Equinor’s partnership in the Humber marks the UK’s first end-to-end hydrogen proposal, connecting production, storage and demand projects in the region. While the Aldbrough facility would initially store the hydrogen produced for the Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, the benefit of this large-scale hydrogen storage extends well beyond power generation. The facility would enable growing hydrogen ambitions across the region, unlocking the potential for green hydrogen, and supplying an expanding offtaker market including heat, industry and transport from the late 2020s onwards.

Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage, and the partners’ other hydrogen projects in the region, are in the development stage and final investment decisions will depend on the progress of the necessary business models and associated infrastructure.

The Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage project is the latest being developed in a long-standing partnership between SSE Thermal and Equinor in the UK, which includes the joint venture to build the Dogger Bank Offshore Wind Farm, the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Stephen Wheeler, Managing Director of SSE Thermal, said: “We’re delighted to be announcing our plans for the development of this world-leading hydrogen storage facility with our partners in Equinor, which would play a vital role in creating a low-carbon hydrogen economy in the Humber and beyond. By delivering large-scale hydrogen storage capacity, we can utilise hydrogen to decarbonise vital power generation, as well as heavy industry, heat, transport, and other hard-to-reach sectors, safeguarding and creating crucial jobs and investment across the region.”

Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President for Low Carbon Solutions at Equinor, said: “Hydrogen will be crucial for the UK to reach its net zero ambition. That’s why we are pleased to be working together with SSE Thermal on developing plans to store low-carbon hydrogen at the Aldbrough site, bringing us and our partners in Zero Carbon Humber closer to our joint ambition to support the Humber region to become the UK’s first net zero carbon cluster. Projects such as these are critical for efforts to reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement and contributing to the UK’s goals to become a world leader in low carbon.”

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European gas prices hit decade highs

 

NBP is at 75p/therm (~33% increase YTD)

TTF is at €30.4/MWh (~65% increase YTD)

Despite the sharp rise in European gas prices and arbitrage opportunity for US LNG into Europe, LNG cargoes are being pulled to Asia where prices remain elevated and fetching premiums.

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Norway's offshore electrification grid

The Utsira High network powers a number of key fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf including:

• Johan Sverdrup (Equinor)
• Edvard Grieg (Lundin)
• Ivar Aasen (Akerbp)
• Gina Krog (Equinor)
• Gudrun (Equinor)
• Sleipner (Equinor)

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BP close to selling Shearwater

NEWS: BP is rumoured to be close to finalising a sale of its 28% stake in the Shearwater field to Tailwind Energy, a North Sea explorer headed by ex-CNOOC veteran Steve Edwards and financing to be obtained from shareholder Mercuria.

BP has previously agreed to sell the asset to Premier Oil in 2020 but that deal fell through as a result of the collapse on oil prices and COVID-19. Premier Oil had also agreed to buy BP's Andrew asset at the time.

BP is also divesting the Andrew asset and it is understood that is being sold to another party.

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HyWind Scotland takes the crown for highest UK wind farm load factor

 

For its third consecutive year, Hywind Scotland – the world’s first floating offshore wind farm – reaches the highest average capacity factor for any wind farm in the UK.

With an average capacity factor of 57.1% in the twelve month period to March 2020, the floating offshore wind farm set a new record in the UK.

During its first two years of operation, the wind farm achieved an average capacity factor of 54%. That compares to an offshore wind average in the U.K. of around 40%. The capacity factor is the ratio of actual energy output over a given period of time, to the maximum possible output.  A higher capacity factor means lower intermittency and higher value.

With this top of the charts performance, the Equinor-operated wind farm has truly proven the potential for floating offshore wind, paving the way for the UK’s announcement of 1GW of floating offshore wind to be developed in the UK by 2030.

Equinor is the global leader in floating offshore wind. With Hywind Tampen onstream in 2022 Equinor will operate a third of floating offshore wind production worldwide.

“In Equinor we are constantly striving to improve the performance of our assets, whilst ensuring we extract learnings to support future projects. The turbines on Hywind Scotland are covered in sensors, to extract as much data from the wind farm as possible. We’re monitoring everything from ballast, mooring, structural strains and the more regular wind turbine sensor data, looking at how best to optimise this innovative technology as we prepare to develop at scale. We’re sharing parts of this data across industry to help the advancement of the technology globally and more widely than just our own operations,” says Sonja Chirico Indrebø, plant manager for Hywind Scotland and Dudgeon, the bottom-fixed wind farm off the coast of North Norfolk, who also can show to strong results.

Sebastian Bringsværd, head of floating wind development at Equinor, and Sonja Chirico Indrebø, plant manager for Hywind Scotland and Dudgeon.

As the first project of its kind, the Hywind Scotland wind farm has provided valuable data and results that will help drive the whole industry forward.

“It’s great to see the results Hywind Scotland and the floating technology keeps delivering. The potential for floating offshore wind is huge. With access to deeper waters and therefore higher and more consistent wind speeds, floating offshore is not only an efficient way to generate electricity from wind, this exciting technology can also provide jobs and value creation for the countries supportive of floating. In the UK alone, we are talking at least 17000 jobs and £33bn GVA by 2050. We believe Scotland has the potential to build a globally competitive offshore wind industry, including a real chance to enhance the development of floating offshore wind,” says Sebastian Bringsværd, head of floating wind development at Equinor.

As a global major in offshore wind with decades of experience in developing offshore energy - oil and gas, Equinor is uniquely placed to drive forward global deployment of floating offshore wind.

In 2009, Equinor installed the first ever floating offshore wind turbine, and Hywind Scotland followed in 2017 as the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm. It is now developing an even bigger project, Hywind Tampen, situated off the coast of Norway. This project, currently in construction, is on schedule to become the world’s largest floating wind farm as well as the first project ever to use wind energy to decarbonise offshore oil and gas production.

A recent report from ORE Catapult showed potential pathways for the growth and cost reduction for floating offshore wind.

Scale is key to cost reduction and Equinor has already seen a reduction in CAPEX per megawatt of 70% between its initial demonstrator, with a capacity of 2.3MW and Hywind Scotland, with a capacity of 30MW. The company expects a further 40% drop between Hywind Scotland and the 88MW Hywind Tampen.

“The global energy industry has been pleasantly surprised by the rapid decline in the cost to deploy fixed bottom offshore wind. We’ve been working on floating offshore wind for more than ten years and we see that significant cost reductions can be achieved through scale and experience, paving the way for floating to become fully commercialised”, says Bringsværd.

Original article link: https://www.equinor.com/en/news/20210323-hywind-scotland-uk-best-performing-offshore-wind-farm.html

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Tullow: Dry well offshore Suriname

 

Tullow had announced that the Goliathberg-Voltzberg North exploration well, on Block 47 (TLW 50%), offshore Suriname was drilled to a ~5,000m TD and encountered good quality reservoir but only minor oil shows.

The well will now be plugged and abandoned. Tullow operated the well and was partnered with Petroandina Resources and Ratio Suriname Limited.

This does not have a direct read across to Tullow's Guyana acreage but is clearly not helpful for sentiment, following a string of dry wells by Exxon in Guyana the latest of which being on the Canje block

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Equinor: all three UK low-carbon projects receive government funding to mature concepts

All three of Equinor’s projects to deliver deep cuts in emissions from industries and support clean growth on the UK’s east coast have received public funding from UK authorities. With a combination of private and public funding, Equinor and its partners will now progress these projects in order to create the world’s first net zero industrial cluster by 2040.

On 17 March 2021 the UK Government announced the funding awards under the UK’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) to three project consortia in which Equinor is directly involved:

• Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH), a twelve-company partnership to turn the UK’s largest industrial cluster net zero through the step-wise deployment of low carbon hydrogen, carbon capture and negative emissions being delivered at sites across the Humber estuary. The first project is the Equinor-led H2H Saltend low carbon hydrogen facility and a hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline network across Humber industrial sites developed by National Grid Ventures.
• Net Zero Teesside (NZT), a five-company partnership to decarbonise the Teesside industrial cluster with carbon capture and build a new gas-fired power station with state-of-the art carbon capture technology.
• Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), a six-company partnership (with ENI, National Grid, Shell, Total and operator bp) to develop offshore carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure in the UK North Sea that will serve both ZCH and NZT.

The three successful bids amount to GBP 229 million in private and public funding, with Equinor and its partners contributing more than two-thirds of the total.

“The shared challenge of climate change requires governments, industries and societies to come together. This funding award from the UK authorities shows this working in practice and we are delighted that these three pioneering projects have been successful. Working with our partners and stakeholders, Equinor will continue to apply our capabilities to deliver these projects, so together we can demonstrate the significant value that carbon capture & storage and hydrogen offer to communities and countries in a net zero future,” says Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president for Marketing, Midstream & Processing in Equinor.

The funding awards from UK Research & Innovation and the funding from Equinor and its partners will be used in each project to move through the detailed engineering and design stages and progress to the point where, subject to the development in parallel of supportive UK policy, a final investment decision (FID) on each can be taken.

“The awards are great news for the UK and for Equinor. The Humber and Teesside make up nearly half of the UK’s industrial emissions so, to reach net zero, there is enormous value in tackling emissions at both clusters together. Rolling out carbon capture use & storage and hydrogen across the UK’s industrial clusters supports the Government’s aims for a green recovery and to level up by safeguarding and creating many high-skilled jobs, and will establish the UK as a world leader in hydrogen and low carbon technologies. As the UK’s leading energy provider, we will continue to work with our partners to progress our projects to final investment decision, engaging locally and nationally to make this happen,” says Grete Tveit, senior vice president for Low Carbon Solutions in Equinor.

In Norway, Equinor and its partners started construction work in January 2021 on Northern Lights, Europe’s first full-scale carbon transportation & storage project, following the Norwegian Parliament’s vote to approve funding in December. Construction is expected to be completed by late 2023 with the first phase operational during 2024.

Original article link: https://www.equinor.com/en/news/20210317-low-carbon-hat-trick-uk.html

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