Energy integration: Green future for late-life offshore oil and gas assets

Abstract

In recent years, the oil and gas industry has been facing objections from a public greatly concerned with the severe environmental impact caused by fossil fuels and their infrastructures, and strong demands from policy makers seeking to meet decarbonisation goals. Amidst a global energy transition, the future demand, finance, and social responsibilities of oil and gas companies are increasingly in question. One of the biggest problems of the industry is what are the “green” solutions for the late-life offshore oil and gas assets. Energy integration with reusing or repurposing oil and gas assets for new technologies could be a worthwhile investment strategy helping reduce carbon emission from oil and gas production as well as accelerating carbon capture and storage (CCS) and green hydrogen development to support the global decarbonisation. According to research, the late-life offshore oil and gas assets play an important role in energy integration while helping to have more opportunities to develop the new technologies that are in the early stages of development with high capex, necessary to make them more economically attractive and facilitate maximum energy integration. Reusing or repurposing oil and gas infrastructure can lead to 30% capex saving and million tons of CO2 pa emission reductions. In this paper, potential concepts of energy integration for offshore oil and gas assets are introduced, and some lessons learned and implications for reusing or repurposing late-life offshore assets for Vietnam are also presented.