Energinet has awarded Fugro a marine site characterization contract for the Danish Energy Island project in the North Sea. The contract is part of Energinet’s preliminary studies to build the world’s first “hub and spoke” energy scheme: an energy island 80 km off the Danish coast that will act as a transmission center for hundreds of surrounding wind turbines. Fugro
Read more
Norway, a country known for its wealth from oil and gas extraction, issued a record number of offshore drilling licenses this month. The 83 total licenses awarded to oil companies include 37 in the North Sea, 32 in the Norwegian Sea and 14 in the Barents Sea, The Barents Observer reports. The Norwegian operator Equinor is among the 33 companies
Read more
Google Street View, which offers an image-based view of street maps, is now offering a virtual tour of the offshore platform, Cygnus, located in the North Sea and operated by Neptune Energy and Spirit Energy. Discovered in 2016 and located 150 km from the coast of the U.K., Cygnus is one of the largest discoveries in the North Sea. The
Read more
A state-of-the-art technique for mapping and counting schools of fish has been tested on an autonomous marine platform in the North Sea, offering a new method for collecting data on fish stocks. Cefas (Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, UK) and Liquid Robotics have successfully deployed, tested and recovered a remotely piloted Wave Glider, which was adapted to allow scientists to
Read more
The Norwegian company Equinor, formerly Statoil, has identified three offshore oil and gas platforms as candidates for replacing their gas turbines with electric power from land-based sources. According to Equinor, the transition may cut CO2 emissions by more than 600,000 tons per year. The platforms include Troll C and the Sleipner field center, which includes the Gudrun tie-in platform in
Read more
Statoil has created its first control room for operating an offshore drilling platform from an onshore location. The platform, Valemon, came on-stream in 2015 and produces 60,000 barrels of gas and condensate each day. While it has 40 cabins, Valemon will now be operated by rotating shifts of 14 operators from the control room in Bergen, Norway, which was launched
Read more