Trio target offshore green hydrogen potential

Aquaterra Energy has signed a partnership with renewable hydrogen producer and supplier Lhyfe and offshore drilling contractor Borr Drilling to develop an innovative concept for offshore green hydrogen production in the North Sea.

The organisations behind Project Haldane will develop an industrial scale offshore green hydrogen production concept, through the deployment of an electrolyser system on a converted jack-up rig.

Reliable winds far out in the North Sea are an exceptional renewable resource, yet remote locations create challenges around grid connectivity and intermittency of supply.
 

This flexible solution will solve this issue by providing an off take for the electricity produced in the immediate vicinity of the windfarm and aims to use existing platforms, pipelines, terminal infrastructure, and offshore equipment leveraging the existing infrastructure to reduce costs.

With governments pushing net zero initiatives forward, this concept offers an alternative deployment of existing assets that provides both a source of green hydrogen and enhances the commercial feasibility of remote offshore wind projects.

“With our expertise in complex offshore operations and fleet management, Borr Drilling will leverage its core capabilities to evaluate the adoption of this alternative energy source in an environment with a large untapped potential. While we will continue to work in our traditional drilling market, this project reinforces our ambition to continuously improve the sustainability of our activities and align our service offering with the changing expectations of our customers and stakeholders,” said Darren Sutherland, Director of Operations at Borr Drilling.

Matthieu Guesné, CEO at Lhyfe, said it is already producing renewable hydrogen in industrial quantities onshore, with a direct connection to renewable energy, pumping sea water and purifying it to feed the electrolysis process, making it a production process already familiar with harsh offshore conditions.

"Over the last few years, we have also been working on different projects to deploy our production process offshore," he said. "Offshore wind offers the greatest potential for sustainable hydrogen production because of the cost effectiveness that can be achieved through scalability and technological innovation. The market is yet to deliver a flexible solution that benefits from the existing infrastructure in the North Sea and Lhyfe wants to be at the forefront of this change by creating a world-first green hydrogen production of this kind."

James Larnder, Managing Director at Aquaterra Energy, said with years of experience in successful delivery of complicated offshore jack up operations, complex structural projects and offshore process systems it is excited to be the interface that brings together the interest of Lhyfe in offshore markets and expands on Borr Drilling’s expertise in jack-up rig equipment.

"Our unique value here is that we are multilingual in terms of the engineering and operational needs of oil and gas assets, and green energy processing systems. We’re looking forward to taking this from concept to reality," he said.  

While the concept is still in its early stages, the consortium welcomes any interested parties to submit enquiries.