Equinor has awarded Wood, the Oilfield services provider, with a new contract with the aims to deliver modifications to two offshore installations in the Norwegian North Sea and to further connect electric power from floating wind turbines forming part of the Hywind Tampen development.
According to a recent statement, Equinor’s project replaces energy generated by gas turbines with electricity from a floating wind park located between the Snorre and Gullfaks fields, reducing emissions by more than 200,000 tonnes per year.
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Specifically, as part of the three-year contract, Wood will provide the topside modifications necessary for the Snorre A and Gullfaks A platforms to integrate the Hywind floating wind park with existing systems powering the facilities.
Developments also include equipment installation on the floating wind turbines and upgrades to the onshore control room in Bergen which will remotely operate the wind farm.
Dave Stewart, CEO of Wood’s Asset Solutions business in Europe, Africa, Asia & Australia stated that “Wood is fully committed to applying our experience gained from decades of working in the region’s oil and gas industry to reduce the carbon intensity of offshore operations by modifying existing infrastructure,” adding that
The Snorre A and Gullfaks A facilities will be the first oil and gas platforms to be powered by a floating offshore wind farm. We are proud to support Equinor on what is a flagship project for the North Sea’s energy transition journey.
It wasn’t long ago when Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company, announced that it made a final investment on the first ever floating wind farm to power two North Sea offshore platforms, a project between Equinor, the Snorre and Gullfaks, which will begin operations in late 2022.
The project will make the Snorre and Gullfaks installations the first oil production platforms (and among the only facilities of any kind) ever powered by a floating wind farm.
Specifically, the wind farm will consist of 11 wind turbines based on the Hywind technology developed by Equinor. The wind farm will be able to achieve a 35% of the annual power demand of the five Snorre A and B, Gullfaks A, B and C platforms.
The Norwegian Government will also contribute to the project, which will cost about $550 million, of which $250 million will be borne by Norwegian authorities through Norway’s Enova environmental initiative.
The wind farm will help cut CO2 emissions by more than 200,000 tonnes annually, which equals to 100,000 annual emissions by passenger cars, by reducing the use of gas turbines on the fields.
What is more, according to TenneT, a European electricity transmission system operator, the wind energy that was transmitted from the North Sea to land, operated by TenneT, increased to 9.51 TWh in the first six months of 2019, seeing a 16% rise, in comparison to the same period last year, where it generated 8.17TWh.
In the meantime, Germany’s offshore wind farms accounted for the 11.64 TWh of electricity to the grid during the first half of 2019, experiencing a 28.8% increase in comparison to the same period last year when the wind farms delivered 9.04TWh of electricity.
On the contrary, Baltic Sea’s wind turbines that are not operated by TenneT, generated 2.13TWh in the first half of 2019, a 145% increase compared to 0.87TWh delivered in the first half of 2018, mainly due to the commissioning of the Arkonaand the Wikinger wind farms.