North Sea energy efficiency decreases CO2 emissions by 10 per cent

June 8, 2010
By Steen Hartvig Jacobsen, journalist

In the course of 2009, the three operators in the Danish North Sea oil and gas fields, Mærsk Olie og Gas, DONG E&P and Hess Denmark, introduced an energy management system, a method for systematically monitoring and controlling energy consumption, which is also used by the energy-intensive companies on land that have entered into a voluntary agreement on energy efficiency. The results were not long in coming.

The increased energy efficiency of various processes resulting from the use of the energy management standard has reduced both fuel consumption and gas flaring from 2008 to 2009, thus lowering CO2 emissions from North Sea oil and gas production from about 2 million tons in 2008 to about 1.8 million tons in 2009, equal to a 10 per cent reduction. CO2 emissions from the North Sea activities represent just less than 3 per cent of total Danish emissions and are covered by the general European CO2 allowance scheme.

More energy-intensive production methods
The introduction of energy management and the increased energy efficiency of production resulting from this management system are the first concrete results of an action plan that the Minister for Climate and Energy and the three operators agreed on in April 2009. Prior to the conclusion of the agreement, the DEA had jointly reviewed the energy consumption associated with oil and gas production with the three operators and made various proposals for specific projects and analyses. This was done to follow up on the energy savings target set out in the energy policy agreement from February 2008.

When calculated in proportion to tons of oil equivalents, CO2 emissions have increased by about 30 per cent since 2004-05. Oil and gas production peaked at that time, but since then oil production has dropped by about one third and natural gas production by about one fourth. In recent years, the operators have had to use increasingly sophisticated and energy-intensive methods to improve the recovery factor for the individual fields. Even though fuel consumption was reduced by 6 per cent from 2008 to 2009, this did not suffice to improve energy consumption per million tons of oil equivalents because the volumes produced declined still further.

As regards gas flared, i.e. the venting of waste gas, the introduction of energy management has meant an unequivocal improvement. Thus, gas flaring was reduced by 36 per cent in the past year and declined to about one third of the level in 2004. In fact, the level of flaring was so low in 2009 that we have to go back to 1980, when only a few offshore installations were in operation, to find a correspondingly low figure. The DEA believes that the operators’ active use of energy management will ensure continued focus on making the future extraction and production of oil and gas in the North Sea more energy efficient.

See the current status of the action plan.