Picture this: It’s 2050, the UK relies on other countries for all its oil and gas supplies. Our associated emissions have skyrocketed because of our reliance on higher carbon imported energy and LNG.
It’s clear that hydrogen produced from renewable energy will play an important role in supporting our transition away from fossil fuels to a low carbon energy system.
The energy transition is disrupting the traditional business model of oil and gas players, and many are now responding by decarbonising and diversifying their portfolios and investing in renewable power.
Talk these days about energy trends nowadays tends to focus on the crisis that has caught Europe and the West by storm. We overlook Southeast Asia at our peril.
Scotland now has a new First Minister and, as ever in politics, there is a bulging in tray for Humza Yousaf as he prepares to lead the country through a period of significant economic challenge.
The Scottish Government has set a target of becoming a net zero carbon nation by 2045 and is aiming to more than double its current renewable electricity generation by 2030. Its big bet to achieve this is wind power, given its low cost and the large potential for viable installations in North Sea waters.
It is now over a year since the ScotWind leasing process created the opportunity for an additional 27.6GW of offshore wind in Scottish waters. Of the 20 projects that came through the application process, 14 are set to use floating wind turbines, positioning Scotland as a world leader in this technology. Whilst the scale of the result was eye catching, the accompanying Scottish supply chain commitments of over £28bn was perhaps the most significant result.
A defining moment doesn’t happen often. But Spring Budget 2023 will likely be viewed from mid-century as the time when the UK fully committed to Carbon Capture and Storage.
HLP believes project developers will struggle to meet demand based on current logistics practices and equipment provision.
It’s hard to know what to expect from 7,500 members of the global energy industry gathered in one convention centre in an American town best known for space travel, cowboys, and Tex-Mex food. Of course it was Texans, back in 1970s that came over to Aberdeen, and led the charge for drilling in the North Sea, something that they went on to do in oil and gas provinces around the world. This week however was about the energy world coming to Texas - at what has become known as the Davos of energy.
The contest to become leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister of Scotland did not get off to an auspicious start. The first week was largely devoted to arguing about the place of God in politics.
The North Sea has been producing oil and gas for over 50 years.
Having a bold vision between people with the chutzpah and drive to turn that into reality is a very scarce commodity in the British Isles.
Nearly every week we hear of an exciting development in carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).
One of my old friends, a Norwegian by the name of Reidar Niemi who ran Stolt Nielsen’s subsea business in Aberdeen in the early 80s once asked me “what the hell is the matter with your (expletive deleted) Scottish banks?”.
It hasn’t happened yet – the buyout of Aberdeen’s energy services giant Wood by an American private equity company, that is.
My husband and I are in the process of moving from Aberdeen, UK to Houston, Texas. Surprisingly enough, not because of his engineering career in Oil & Gas, but because I am a Chartered International Financial Planner.
Replace oil and gas? Anyone connected to the Scottish energy sector knows that the investment in creating those high skill, high value, high wage jobs simply isn’t happening on anything like the scale it needs to, writes Dick Winchester.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has long been touted as part of the solution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
If the Russian invasion of Ukraine has taught us anything it’s that war isn’t now so much a matter of slugging it out hand to hand on the battlefield and firing big lumps of metal at each other, although sadly that still happens, but increasingly about making far greater use of remote controlled and autonomous or semi autonomous weaponry.
While the country cries out for cheap electricity, it seems perverse to fork out hundreds of millions of pounds to pay wind farm operators not to generate electricity.
How we talk about mental health has drastically changed in recent years.
The erosion of the rights and pay of North Sea energy industry workers appear to have taken a further turn for the worse amid the gig economy.
Is the North Sea getting to grips with ESG?
The continual clamour to stop fossil fuel production is both powerful and persuasive. But should this heartfelt passion for net zero trump the dull pragmatism of energy supply? What will the journey to net zero really look like?