FPSO giant piloting world's first post-combustion offshore CCS plant - Upstream Online
FPSO giant piloting world’s first post-combustion offshore CCS plant | Upstream Online
Malaysian floater specialist Yinson Production and operator Azule Energy are piloting an offshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant onboard the Agogo floating production, storage and offloading vessel, offshore Angola.
“This is a significant milestone towards the realisation of Yinson Production’s zero emissions FPSO concept that aims to reduce [the] carbon footprint and pave the way for the decarbonisation of the offshore production industry,” Yinson said in a statement on Monday.
FPSO players are increasingly including innovative CCS solutions on new floaters, aimed at reducing carbon emissions — in line with their long-term net zero goals.
Yinson stated that the offshore CCS plant “is the world’s first post-combustion carbon capture unit installed onboard an FPSO".
“It is designed at a pilot scale and will be used as a demonstration unit in an offshore floating environment to assess technical readiness and gain operational know-how,” the company noted.
The Malaysian player said the low carbon project “marks an important step in implementing future scale-up of the CCS technology” for the company’s zero emissions floater projects.
“In addition to the CCS plant, FPSO Agogo will feature other emissions-lowering technologies such as electrification, advanced automation and digitalisation, a combined-cycle power system, a seawater turbine generator, a hydrocarbon cargo tank blanketing scheme and an integrated closed flare system,” it said.
Yinson said the envisaged changes “onboard FPSO Agogo will significantly reduce its overall carbon emissions and improve operational efficiency, transforming it into an industry-leading project".
Carbon Circle Holding, a carbon removal and energy engineering, procurement and construction company, has been selected to design and construct the CCS plant.
Construction on the plant is progressing well, with first steel being cut last month and all other milestones progressing as per schedule, according to Yinson.
Flemming Gronnegaard, chief executive of Yinson Production, said the sustainable energy solutions “will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions” from operations.
The Agogo FPSO is the contractor’s first offshore production project in Angola and its eighth project in the West African region.
Azule — a 50:50 joint venture between Eni and BP — is Angola’s largest independent oil and gas producer.
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Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.