UK offshore oil and gas - Energy and Climate Change Contents


Memorandum submitted by ABB

1.   About ABB

  1.1  ABB is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impacts. ABB in the UK operates from more than 20 locations nationally and employs around 2,300 people. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 120,000 people.

  1.2  Technology plays a key role for ABB with our nine research centres, 6,000 scientists and 70 university collaborations across the world, of which several are in the UK. ABB is a one of the largest providers of transmission grid plant and equipment to connect Round 2 and proposed Round 3 offshore wind farms to the UK and European Grid systems.

2.   Executive Summary

  2.1  Developing and innovating in offshore automation and electrification technology is the key to extending the life of the UK Continental Shelf and the North Sea oil field. Such innovation can improve the exploitation of the UK's remaining offshore oil and gas reserves while at the same time reducing the harmful impact on the environment.

  2.2  In order to encourage investment in technology development and innovation, the UK Government needs to foster a long-term co-ordinated offshore strategy that will give clarity to the industry and supply chain. The strategy should be both UK-wide and connected to existing strategies in Europe.

  2.3  Offshore oil and gas platforms should where appropriate and where environmental and financial benefit can be realised, be connected to a North Sea Electricity Transmission system.

  2.4  The UK Government should work with industry and universities to address the skills issues in advanced engineering and to take full advantage of the opportunities that the UK Continental Shelf and the North Sea oil field present.

3.   How can the UK's remaining offshore oil and gas reserves be exploited most effectively? What barriers are there to exploiting such reserves?

Offshore electrification

  3.1  Offshore electrification can become instrumental in providing solutions for projects with space constraints and low weight budgets but where improved system performance is essential. ABB has been at the forefront of the industry's drive to develop electro-technical solutions compliant with existing requirements for energy efficiency, control and safety enabling remote and unmanned operations. Current ABB solutions in operation around the world include HVDC Light and subsea power transmission. These can be applied successfully to some of the challenges presented by the location and depth of some of the UK's remaining oil and gas reserves.

Offshore automation

  3.2  Increasingly innovative solutions in offshore automation can also help meet these challenges. ABB has developed a number of internationally used solutions, including enhanced control over flow, level, temperature and pressure measurement. Where fully implemented—for example Ormen Lange on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and De Ruyter on the Dutch Continental Shelf—greater control over offshore automation has increased production and extended the lifetime of assets.

The need for a co-ordinated approach

  3.3  The issue for the UK is whether the fiscal and regulatory framework can provide the long-term vision to empower the supply chain to confidently innovate in offshore electrification and automation in the same way as being proposed elsewhere in the world.

4.   What can be done to minimise the environmental impact of exploiting the reserves? How should this be encouraged and/or financed?

Practical solutions: a case study

  4.1  ABB's HVDC Light has been successfully applied on the Troll A platform in a Norwegian Gas Field in the North Sea, 70 kilometres off the coast of Norway. Troll A is the tallest construction that has ever been moved to another position, relative to the surface of the Earth, and is among the largest and most complex engineering projects in history. It can produce up to 100 million cubic metres of gas per day. The gas is driven to a processing plant by compressors, before being transported through pipelines to the European continent. HVDC Light is one of the ABB solutions being used to deliver electrical power to the offshore installations, 2 x 40 MW compressor units. As well as doing that effectively it has both lowered operating costs and reduced environmental impact by using renewable electricity from Norwegian hydro stations rather than fossil fuels to operate gas compressors.

5.   How effective is the current fiscal and regulatory regime in which the industry operates?

The importance of a co-ordinated approach

  5.1  ABB is observing a growing demand for subsea electricity transmission systems to connect very large quantities of offshore wind. This will result in the creation of HVDC links far out into the North Sea. Currently no UK plan exists to co-ordinate the construction of this electricity transmission system with interconnectors and electrification of oil and gas platforms. The current Regulatory regime for offshore transmission does not consider the wider system requirements for a North Sea transmission system and as such is likely to result in sub-optimal transmission solutions for any future integrated North Sea Grid.

Observations from across Europe

  5.2  ABB has observed that other European countries particularly Scandinavia endeavour to define longer term intergrated plans that consider oil and gas, renewables and electricity interconnectors to other European countries, to best serve their energy requirements and efficiently provide power to offshore oil and gas installations. No such co-ordinated long term strategic view for an offshore electricity subsea grid system appears to exist in the UK.

6.   How are the skills needs of the sector being met? How transferable are those skills?

ABB's involvement in developing skills

  6.1  ABB is delighted to be involved with several UK universities, the Power Academy and the Power Sector Skills Steering Group on skills development and has recently reinvigorated its apprenticeship programme.

Meeting the UK engineering skills challenge

  6.2  The UK is not alone in having a shortage of skilled engineers; it is a problem that exists across the world. ABB believes that the UK can gain competitive advantage in the new green economy if it invests in science and engineering. ABB believes that in order to deliver the innovative changes necessary for securing our energy future, a new breed of engineers is needed who are multi-skilled in a variety of disciplines. There is already an identified shortage of skilled engineers. It is important that government works with industry to provide the leadership and direction for improving the training and certification of our future workforce. ABB believes that industry and government need to work together to develop a fit for purpose skills and training strategy. This requires that industry and university establishments are much more closely aligned so that academic and theoretical learning is tuned to the needs of industry. It may also require that greater financial support—both public and private—is provided to engineering undergraduates and post-graduates.

March 2009





 
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