Floating wind pioneer Cerulean Winds claimed it can make oil & gas production off Scotland “the cleanest in the world” as it unveiled multi-billion-pound plans to decarbonise North Sea platforms.
Cerulean Winds said it will bid for four 1.5GW seabed sites up for grabs as part of Scotland's Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas leasing round (INTOG) due to open in August.
The developer, which has teamed up with marine engineering group NOV to supply steel semisubmersible platforms and moorings, claimed with an investment of more than £6bn ($7.2bn) for each 100-turbine site, the scale of the planned build-out would be transformational for costs.
Dan Jackson, founding director of Cerulean Winds said: “We have a big, bold bid, which is ready to go on scaling the green economy, creating thousands of jobs and making Scotland’s oil and gas production the cleanest in the world.
“The scale we are proposing makes the project economics appealing for providing affordable green power to the platforms to replace gas and diesel generation through a combination of green electrons from wind and molecules from hydrogen.”
Cerulean Winds said it and NOV have been “engaging the supply chain for over 18 months” over local production options for the floating platforms, claiming it has the potential to create 10,000 jobs,
The Crown Estate Scotland will launch INTOG in a bid to marry green power from floating wind with offshore hydrocarbon production in a process separate to the giant ScotWind round that awarded 25GW early this year.
INTOG is scheduled to kick off in August with an application window that closes in November.
Norwegian giant Equinor upped the ante for wind-powered oil & gas decarbonisation last month when it unveiled its 1GW Trollvind plan off Norway to power hydrocarbons fields at less than $100 per megawatt hour by 2027.
