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Utilising North Sea oil platforms for geothermal power generation?

Utilising North Sea oil platforms for geothermal power generation? Offshore oil platform, North Sea (source: flickr/ Håkon Thingstad, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 19 Mar 2018

A recent rather interesting article explores the opportunities for offshore geothermal development describing the utilisation of redundant North Sea oil and gas platforms for geothermal power generation. Looks like this could be a real option.

The topic of utilising oil and gas wells for geothermal has been raised here before, even the topic of possible offshore geothermal development. A recent article in an Offshore Magazine by George Lockett goes further.

In the article he looks into if “Geothermal power: [is] an alternate role for redundant North Sea platforms? So how would this make sense?

Well, non-performing platforms – when the oil and gas field is depleted (reached the end of its productive life), the structures can be removed  or being used elsewhere. But – so his argument – they could also be used for extracting geothermal energy.

It could – if successful – create thousands of new jobs for offshore and onshore support sectors.

According to the article, the UK continental shelf, where many platforms are situated – wells drilled have high bottomhole temperatures. More than 50 wells, so the author, have geothermal gradients of more than 50 centigrades/ km, the highest being 147 centigrades/ km.

“At Total’s Elgin-Franklin high-pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) gas condensate development in the UK central North Sea, one of the wells was drilled to a depth of 6,100 m (20,013 ft), with a temperature of 387°F (197°C) and a pressure of 16,750 psi (1,155 bar).”

So how could this be utilised for power generation?

Check out the full article linked below that describes not only possible power generation on the platforms utilising geothermal energy, but also technical challenges and possible solutions.

Source: Offshore Magazine