Green energy is now flowing from the Hywind Tampen floating offshore wind farm to a second oil and gas field.
Energy giant Equinor (OSLO: EQNR) confirmed on Tuesday that operations at Snorre, located in the southern part of the Norwegian Sea, have been hooked up to the development.
Production from Hywind Tampen, “the world’s largest” floating offshore wind park, got underway in November, with power going to the Gullfaks field.
It is now part-powering Snorre, which has been on stream since 1992 and consists of two platforms, as well as extensive underwater production systems.
© Øyvind HagenHywind Tampen is the first wind farm globally to power oil and gas installations, and is expected to meet about 35% of the electricity demand of Gullfaks and Snorre once it reaches full capacity.
Once complete the project will consist of 11, 8.6 megawatt (MW) turbines – giving it a total capacity of 88MW – and will reduce CO2 emissions at the fields by about 200,000 tonnes annually.
One turbine remains to be installed at the site, after a weather enforced break over the winter, with the final unit due to head to the Norwegian Sea this week.
Hywind Tampen is owned by the Gullfaks and Snorre partnerships, which also includes Petoro, OMV, Var Energi, Wintershall Dea and INPEX Idemitsu Norge.
For Equinor, full power at the project will give the Oslo-listed company nearly half (47%) of the world’s operational floating wind capacity.
Mammoet recently shared breathtaking footage of its efforts to support the assembly of Hywind Tampen project.
The heavy lift specialist was brought in to help move and assemble the turbines – including tower sections, nacelles and blades – onto huge 107m spar buoys for towing and deployment out to the site.
Following its experience during the deployment of the world’s first floating site – Equinor’s Hywind Scotland project – Mammoet was engaged to undertake turbine assembly and associated port handling work.
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