Business secretary Greg Clark has granted consent for or offshore wind turbines with a tip height of 247m for the East Anglia THREE project, which will have a total output of up to 1200MW. This output would require up to 172 individual turbines across an area of 305 km2, 69 km east of Great Yarmouth. A company spokesman told The Engineer that no decision had yet been taken on the source of the turbines.   Scottish Power Renewables chief executive Keith Anderson commented ... Read more

Maersk Oil announces it is on track to deliver first gas from a major North Sea oil field in 2019. The Culzean field, which lies around 145 miles east of Aberdeen is expected to produce 60-90,000 barrels of oil per day. Maersk claimed the field could meet 5% of the UK gas demand by 2020-21. Read more

The University of Strathclyde and Babcock are to lead an industrial partnership worth £4.2m with the aim of making nuclear assets safer and more reliable.   The Programme will develop advanced inspection techniques, biotechnology solutions for infrastructure repair and new products and processes for managing nuclear power facilities and extending their lifetime. The project forms part of a £138m investment in research-business partnerships announced by the UK government and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).   The project involves Babcock, EDF Energy, Kinectrics ... Read more

The first delivery of oil from of the largest new drilling operations in the North Sea has been welcomed. Located around 125 km east of the Shetland Islands, the £2 billion investment in the Kraken oilfield by oil and gas development and production company EnQuest, was made possible by the UK Government’s support for the sector.   The oilfield is expected to contain around 128 million barrels of oil and support more than 1,000 jobs in the UK for each year of Its ... Read more

The world’s first floating windfarm has taken to the seas. Two turbines were floated this week, increasing the number to five. Located in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland.   The £200m Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-metre-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to ... Read more

Oil has begun flowing from a North Sea field which is part of a wider project aimed at unlocking 100 million barrels of additional reserves. Operator Repsol Sinopec Resources UK said first oil had been achieved at the Shaw field, about 200km (124 miles) east of Aberdeen.   Shaw is part of the Montrose Area Redevelopment (MAR). Repsol Sinopec said MAR could extend the life of a number of fields in the area to beyond 2030. The project has involved modifying and expanding ... Read more

A new 600MW wind farm off the Dutch coast has come online, and will eventually provide power to 1.5 million people.   Situated 85km into the North Sea off the coast of Groningen, the Gemini wind park is one of the world’s largest.  Its 150 turbines cover 68 square kilometres, and provide an installed capacity of 600MW. According to Gemini, the location has some of the highest and most consistent wind speeds in the North Sea, averaging 36km/h.   ____________________     Batteries that have powered electric cars ... Read more

The UK has seen a huge growth in wind farm installations, with the cumulative offshore and onshore wind installed capacity in the UK in 2016 recorded at 12.1GW, according to Wind Europe’s Wind in Power: 2016 statistics report.   Because of a lack of energy storage, the UK electricity grid is unable to handle the large amounts of intermittent electricity created by renewable sources like wind farms during times of low energy demand. Too much or too little power can throw off the ... Read more

Ineos, the petrochemicals group, is in talks with BP to buy the Forties pipeline system, one of the most strategically important pieces of infrastructure in the North Sea.   The Forties network is made up of about 100 miles of pipeline and handles around 450,000 barrels of oil a day equivalent to 40 per cent of UK production —from 80 different oilfields.   A sale of the pipeline system would complete BP’s withdrawal from assets that once formed the heart of its operations after North ... Read more

A fourth phase of a wind farm straddling the boundary between the Borders and East Lothian is being considered. It would take the total number of turbines at Crystal Rig in the Lammermuir Hills to over 100. A briefing note on the latest proposal for a further 11 turbines has been submitted to Scottish Borders Council. Developers Fred Olsen Renewables said it was an “ideal location” to help meet renewable energy targets. When the original 25-turbine Crystal Rig development became operational in ... Read more