Big Oil pilots use of floating wind turbine to power gas platform

French oil and gas supermajor TotalEnergies is piloting a floating wind turbine at its Culzean offshore gas production platform in the North Sea, in a “decarbonisation” effort that seems to have lost something in translation.

TotalEnergies says it will use a 3 MW floating wind turbine to provide renewable power to the Culzean offshore gas platform, located just two kilometres away and about 220 kilometres off the eastern coast of Scotland.

The floating wind turbine is expected to supply around 20 per cent of the power needs for the Culzean offshore platforms once complete in 2025.

The pilot project is billed as an effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the Culzean offshore platform – though, of course, this refers only to the energy requirements of operations at the platforms, and not the subsequent greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuels being exported back to the United Kingdom.

Selected in Crown Estate Scotland’s Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas (INTOG) leasing round, which is designed to encourage and support the use of offshore wind energy in supplying electricity to offshore oil and gas platforms, the 3MW wind turbine will be installed on a modular, light semi-submersible floater hull designed by Ocergy.  

“This innovative pilot project aims at proving the concept of hybridization 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,” said Marie-Noelle Semeria, chief technology officer at TotalEnergies.

“It also aims at qualifying a promising floater design for the future of floating offshore wind.”