North-east left to wonder what might have been
Loss of Peterhead Power Station project to Persian Gulf still rankles
Published:
AS LONGANNET Power Station looks poised to become the first in Europe to harness carbon capture, those connected with the north-east’s biggest generating facility have been left to ponder what might have been.
It looked for years as if Peterhead Power Station was going to become the first in the world to use the potentially planet-saving technology, using a gas separation technique to extract reserves from the Miller oil field.
However, the scheme failed to win the backing of the UK Government and, last year, Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks admitted Labour had torpedoed the plans to save British taxpayers “hundreds of millions of pounds”.
The decision forced BP and Scottish Hydro owner Scottish and Southern to pull out of plans to extract carbon dioxide (CO) from gas landed at the huge St Fergus terminal near Peterhead – a pre-combustion process – before pumping it out to sea.
BP has since decommissioned the Miller field, where it had been intended to inject the carbon to raise pressure and extract more oil. The scheme is now going ahead in the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi.
The UK Government is now backing carbon capture, but in its post-combustion form, turning the CO generated by coal-fired power stations to liquid and burying it beneath the North Sea.
The Scottish Government is backing the new scheme. But a spokeswoman admitted the loss of the Peterhead scheme still hurt.
She said: “The first minister has expressed his great disappointment at the loss of the Peterhead carbon capture project to Abu Dhabi as a result of UK Government indecision.
“However, we do welcome the UK’s most recent, clearer support for CCS, where Scotland has a huge comparative advantage.”
The carbon capture process planned for Peterhead would have involved separating gas into hydrogen and CO.
The hydrogen would have been burned to fire the power station’s generators, while the COwould have been pumped back to the Miller field, where it would have helped flush out the last reserves of oil.
The Miller field is still in line to benefit from the post-combustion carbon capture plans, under which up to 52million extra barrels of oil are expected to be recovered through enhanced oil recovery. Other oil fields that have been suggested as suitable are Dunlin, Thistle, Claymore, Cormorant, Scott, Statfjord, Beryl A, Ninian, Brent, Murchison, Buzzard, Piper and Forties.
