Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 33 2021

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COSTA RICA
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Hydropower accounted for most of the total, with 72% of Costa Rica’s power output coming from hydroelectric power plants.
Geothermal facilities contributed another 14.9% and wind parks another 12%, while solar farms and biomass facilities accounted for the
remaining 0.8%.
Renewable energy has helped Costa Rica
become a net exporter of electricity. The coun- try’s installed generating capacity amounts to around 3,150 MW, in excess of domestic demand around 2,500 MW. ™
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Aquaterra Energy finishes engineering design for renewable-powered rig
UK-BASED Aquaterra Energy revealed last week that it had completed the engineering design for a renewable energy-powered drilling platform that will be installed at the Zandolie field in Trinidad and Tobago’s offshore zone.
Aquaterra said in a statement that the new platform would be built according to its Sea Swift modular design. The design envisions the construction of an unmanned minimum-facil- ities unit for installation at a site in 20-metre- deep water, it reported. The platform will use tie-backs to establish a connection to produc- tion facilities at the nearby Iguana field, it added.
According to the statement, the unit “will be self-powered by a wind turbine and a solar bank.” Aquaterra did not reveal the design capacity of these facilities, but it did note that the use of two types of renewable energy would help the platform avoid intermittency or inter- ruptions in power supply and also allow it to transfer excess power to a battery for storage.
The company also touted the environmental benefits of the project. “The innovative solu- tion eliminates the need for traditional diesel generators for power, significantly reducing emissions, including those associated with the maintenance and logistics for refuelling visits to the platform,” it explained.
Aquaterra also pointed out that the project would help DeNovo, the local company that is leading development work at both Zando- lie and Iguana, reduce costs in several ways. This is partly because the new platform will be “equipped with intelligent monitoring technol- ogy, which reduces maintenance trips by only requiring personnel to visit when alerted via onshore systems,” it said.
Sea Swift modular platforms will also carry a lower price tag because they require less steel than other drilling platforms, it added. More- over, it said, the new unit will be designed for installation by a jack-up rig, thereby eliminating the need for DeNovo to charter and mobilise a more expensive heavy lift vessel.
Stewart Maxwell, Aquaterra’s technical direc- tor, touted the Sea Swift’s ability to reduce the
carbon emissions generated by upstream oil and gas projects. “Intelligent engineering is at the heart of what we do, so this renewable-powered solution is a testament to our ethos,” he said. “We are committed to delivering solutions that sup- port our client’s decarbonisation efforts across all aspects of our work – whether that’s reducing interfaces, indirect emissions or enabling more in-country fabrication. All of these actions add up, and that’s why we’re focused on more effi- cient operations across every aspect of the value chain.”
Meanwhile, Bryan Ramsumair, the man- aging director of DeNovo, said he expected the new platform to make development oper- ations more efficient while also reducing the environmental impact of the Zandolie project. “DeNovo is committed to securing Trinidad and Tobago’s energy future in a cleaner way,” he said. “The Zandolie platform will be 100% powered by renewable energy. This is proof of our com- mitment to develop hydrocarbon resources in a way that minimises the carbon footprint of our operations.”
Ramsumair also pointed out that the new platform would probably be built by local com- panies. “We have built off our existing infra- structure for our Iguana field, which has enabled a smaller platform for our second field develop- ment. We are confident that this will enable the Zandolie platform to be fabricated in Trinidad and Tobago, maximising the use of local exper- tise and further emphasising DeNovo’s local content commitment,” he said. ™
Rendering of Zandolie rig (Image: Aquaterra Energy)
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 33 19•August•2021