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Re-use of existing offshore infrastructure for hydrogen production, transport and storage

Project Summary

Hydrogen will form one of the UK’s future energy sources and combined with the North Sea’s offshore wind potential, there is significant opportunity to co-locate hydrogen production with renewable energy. Creating an incredible opportunity for the UK.

The project was intended to identify technologies suitable for hydrogen production offshore and examine the re-use of existing offshore infrastructure for the production and transport of hydrogen to minimize environmental impact and gain a time advantage for deployment of hydrogen production equipment at scale.

The primary objectives of the projects were:

  • Proposing viable environmental and economic technology solutions for offshore hydrogen production
  • Concept development of a new Industrial Hydrogen Production test facility

Initial assessment of existing pipeline network for hydrogen transport and storage.


Industry value:
The project identified potential options to produce hydrogen offshore through re-use of existing infrastructure and provided an outline plan for the creation of a Hydrogen Hub in Orkney to support the accelerated development and deployment of hydrogen production technologies within the UK.

Key results:
The project yielded the following key conclusions:

• Hydrogen Production Technologies: Four technologies were identified for hydrogen production offshore
• Scenarios for Offshore Hydrogen: A large offshore asset completely re-purposed for hydrogen could produce circa 20,000kg per day of hydrogen
• Pipeline Re-Use for Hydrogen Service: The Phase 1 project suggests that approximately 30% of the existing pipelines could be repurposed for the transportation of hydrogen
• Hydrogen Hub Orkney: The creation of a dedicated hydrogen hub would support the accelerated development of hydrogen production technologies

Lessons learned / Next steps:
Phase 1 of the HOP project made considerable progress in developing a solution for the production of hydrogen offshore, utilising existing oil & gas infrastructure.

The Phase 2 scope has two primary elements:

• The establishment of the Hydrogen Hub Orkney (H2O) to facilitate testing and onwards deployment of the technologies for offshore use
• The front end engineering design work will be completed to allow the installation of hydrogen technology to an offshore asset

These two scopes are required to happen in parallel in order for us to achieve the scale of hydrogen production required by the UK.

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