BP, ChevronTexaco start up wind farm

Petroleum News Alaska Staff

BP and ChevronTexaco said Dec. 3 that their new, 22.5 megawatt wind farm project in The Netherlands has begun commercial production and sale of “green electricity” into the Dutch national power grid.

The companies said the $23 million project, located at their jointly owned Nerefco oil refinery near Rotterdam, generates sufficient electricity for approximately 20,000 Dutch households. Within Europe it is the first large scale wind project on a brownfield refinery site and will displace 20,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Ownership of the wind farm is in proportion to that of the Nerefco refinery: BP, 69 percent and ChevronTexaco, 31 percent.

Xavier Bontemps, Nerefco refinery manager, said the new wind project represented an innovative use of brownfield land: “Placing the project within our refinery optimizes the use of our assets, minimizes any visual or noise impact on the surrounding area and helps The Netherlands achieve its environmental targets.”

The wind project consists of nine Nordex turbines, each 120 meters tall and with a generating capacity of 2.5MW. The companies said the Dutch government has set a target to increase the amount of electricity generated from renewable sources to 5 percent by 2005. At present, wind accounts for approximately 1 TWh of the total Netherlands power market but this figure is predicted to rise to 4 TWh by 2010, equivalent to approximately 35-45 percent of the total renewable power generation in The Netherlands.