In focus: Oil & gas players taking lead roles in energy transition

A number of energy transition-related updates hit our headlines this week, from new developments in the renewables sector to further initiatives in ship decarbonisation – and oil & gas companies’ new moves in both of those, and more.

ExxonMobil has now joined the Acorn carbon capture and storage project (CCS) in Scotland, developed by a joint venture between Shell, Storegga, and Harbour Energy.

The project plans to capture and store approximately 5-6 million tons of CO2 per year by 2030 from gas terminals at the St Fergus complex at Peterhead, which includes ExxonMobil’s joint venture gas terminal.

The company also said it had joined NECCUS, an alliance of industry, government and academic experts committed to reducing carbon emissions from industrial facilities in Scotland.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil’s Acorn partner Shell has just announced it submitted multiple proposals for floating wind projects offshore Scotland, as part of the ScotWind leasing round that closed for submissions on 16 July.

The oil and gas major, which has been doing business in the offshore wind sector for a while now, has placed its bids with Crown Estate Scotland together with Scottish Power Renewables, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola. The two plan to jointly develop the world’s first large-scale floating offshore wind farms in the north-east of Scotland.

Shell has also entered into a cooperation with the Swiss shipping major Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) to help accelerate the decarbonisation of the global shipping sector.

MSC and Shell have signed a long-term memorandum of understanding (MOU), agreeing to “play enhanced roles” in the energy transformation of shipping, as developers and early adopters of innovative technologies and fuel solutions.

Specifically, the companies said they planned to develop a range of “safe, sustainable and competitive” technologies that can reduce emissions from existing assets and help to enable a net-zero emissions future for shipping.

The shipping sector is also seeing developments towards net-zero future from companies such as Wärtsilä, which has tested engines running purely on hydrogen or ammonia.

Currently, its engines can use natural gas, biogas, synthetic methane or blends containing up to 25 per cent of hydrogen.

Now, the company has reported that it had performed several full-scale engine tests running on ammonia and hydrogen as part of its new net-zero test program at its engine laboratory in Vaasa, Finland, to assess the optimum engine parameters for running on these fuels.

Wärtsilä expects to have an engine running on an ammonia blend already this year, with an engine concept using pure ammonia fuel to be rolled out in 2023. For hydrogen-powered engines, the company believes that it will have an engine and plant concept for pure hydrogen operation ready by 2025.

And while energy transition is advancing with more and more concrete projects, it is now also showing its benefits for the corporate wallets, too, at least judging by the recently published results from Aker Solutions.

Namely, the company has reported an order intake of NOK 12.2 billion (€ 1.2 million) in the second quarter of 2021, of which about 60 per cent is related to energy transition work.

Aker Solutions said this was the strongest quarter in several years, with its orderbook going up almost 30 per cent in Q2 2021, compared to the same period last year, equalling 1.8 times book-to-bill.

The work related to energy transition that the company is specialised in is mainly within the offshore wind sector.

On top of offshore wind and all the energy transition and renewable energy projects now under development, clean energy efforts could be soon boosted further as floating solar technology is now seeing fast progress.

In the Netherlands, an offshore floating solar demonstrator was reported to have survived all storms encountered in the North Sea in the past 18 months as part of its testing period.

Said to be the first offshore floating solar system in the world, the installation powered through all storms in the year and a half since its deployment, including storms Ciara, Dennis, Bella and Evert.

According to the offshore floating solar technology developer, Oceans of Energy, this shows that the system is ready for the realisation of combined offshore solar and wind projects creating 100 to 5,000 MW of offshore solar energy per project.

More renewable energy resources are the first line in the global fight against climate change, which is already very noticeably showing its impacts on the planet and our local environment. One of these is certainly its effect on coastlines, which has been widely studied and continues to be under the scientists’ scrutiny.

One of the most recent studies in this regard comes from researchers at IHE Delft, Twente University and Deltares, who found that – for the most extreme IPCC climate scenario (RCP 8.5) – 90 per cent of the studied coasts could retreat in the coming century, with two thirds of them retreating by more than 100 metres. However, the other coasts are projected to prograde due to an increase in sand supply by rivers.

While such land-side and sea-side phenomena both affect the sand budget of the coastal inlet system, their combined effect has not been adequately investigated until now, according to Deltares.