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UK competition winners get funds to kick-start North Sea oil & gas electrification UK’s petroleum regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), has selected three winners for its £1 million offshore electrification competition, aiming to advance oil and gas electrification plans as part of the UK’s decarbonisation efforts. Three winners are sharing a £1 million, or about $1.3 million, prize for ideas that could help cut greenhouse gas emissions by moving forward the drive to electrify platforms in the North Sea.
The Decarbonisation competition for the electrification of offshore oil and gas installations was launched by the OGA, working with BEIS, in September 2021 to fund technical and commercial studies on offshore electrification in the UK North Sea as part of the North Sea Transition Deal outcomes. By late October, the regulator received 29 bids. The results have now been announced and the winning applications look at various ideas that could speed up essential electrification projects. The three companies must now complete work on their studies by 31 March 2022,
with project reports to be published in 2Q 2022, the UK regulator said on Monday. The winners are Orcadian Energy (project lead) for innovative concepts for the electrification of offshore installations in the Central Graben with an award of £466,667; Ørsted (project lead) for addressing technical and commercial requirements of windfarm connections with offshore installations with an award of £239,360; and Katoni Engineering for an optimised interface for distributed offshore renewable sources supplying existing offshore installations
with secure and low-emissions power with an award of £335,280. Dr. Andy Samuel, OGA Chief Executive, said: “This competition has sparked significant interest from a broad cross-section of the industry with an impressive range of innovative proposals. The investment and infrastructure to move projects forward now will be beneficial long into the future, enabling network grid and offshore wind expansion.” Carlo Procaccini, OGA Head of Technology, said: “We were delighted with the strong industry interest in the £1m
