The Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) announced on 4 December that it has been awarded £500,000 of funding for its Hydrogen Offshore Production (HOP) Project, which has now completed its first phase.
The HOP Project, which is exploring feasibility of an offshore hydrogen supply programme at Flotta Oil Terminal in Orkney, was one of 13 successful applications in receiving a share of BEIS’ £20mn Hydrogen Supply Competition fund. It is a collaboration of five other project partners: Aquatera, Cranfield University, Doosan Babock, European Marine Energy Centre Hydrogen and NOV.
If the project is successful, it could enable bulk hydrogen production using offshore platforms and could offset a portion of decommissioning costs that are currently estimated for all offshore assets and infrastructure. It also aims to tackle the challenge of bulk hydrogen production by:
- proposing viable environmental and economic technology solutions
- developing a new industrial hydrogen production test site
- marketing the business case for the re-purposing of existing offshore infrastructure, and
- demonstrating the viability of decentralised hydrogen generation.