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New use for unwanted platforms
by The Associated Press
Norway’s state oil company, Statoil, is pondering a giant recycling idea: converting unwanted offshore oil platforms into pollution-free power plants that transform ocean tides into energy.
Oil platforms in the deep waters off Norway include some of the world’s tallest structures, and the cost of dismantling them as they become obsolete could run into billions of dollars.
Turning unwanted units into tidal power plants could cut costs and be a source of renewable energy, Bjoern Bekken of Statoil said Sept. 2. Virtually all of Norway’s electricity is now provided by hydroelectric plants.
“It’s an interesting idea. If you look at tidal power, it’s completely clean environmentally,” he said by telephone from Statoil’s headquarters in the western city of Stavanger.
The idea, which Bekken stressed was still in very preliminary stages, would be to tow unneeded platforms to land, convert them to power plants and then tow them to areas with strong tidal currents.
Those currents would turn a waterwheel, providing the power needed to generate electricity.
Obsolete platforms improve viability Statoil came upon the idea while doing a feasibility study of tidal power plants together with the Norwegian research institute SINTEF and north Norway electricity company Hammerfest Stroem, Bekken said.
The study concluded that it would be too expensive to build such plants from scratch. But with obsolete platforms and increasing efficiency of water wheels, the project could become viable, the study said.
The problem of disposing of unneeded oil platforms became a concern in 1995, when Greenpeace activists boarded the Brent Spar offshore oil buoy to prevent the Shell oil company from sinking it in the North Atlantic.
After the protests, Shell decided to tow the Brent Spar to Norway and dismantle it.
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