By next year, nearly two-thirds of the gas extracted by the ORLEN Group from the Norwegian Continental Shelf will come from facilities powered by renewable energy, supplied from land via underwater power lines. This solution has already been implemented in the Gina Krog, Ormen Lange and Duva fields, which will allow the corporation to avoid more than 88,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2024. ORLEN plans to electrify more fields, including Fenris and Yggdrasil, which are currently under development.
Norway is a crucial market for us in terms of securing natural gas supplies to Poland. We are consistently developing our extraction capabilities there. In November, we signed a purchase agreement for KUFPEC Norway, meaning that from next year, the ORLEN Group’s gas extraction in Norway will increase by one third – to more than 4 billion cubic meters annually. Among the assets acquired are shares in the Gina Krog field, which thanks to the transaction will increase from about 11% to 41%. This year, the Gina Krog platform was connected to the onshore electricity grid powered by renewable energy, which will allow a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions associated with production at this facility by 80% in 2024. The completion of the KUFPEC Norway acquisition will mean that already two-thirds of our gas production in Norway will be conducted in the most sustainable way possible, guaranteeing the achievement of ambitious climate goals set by the Norwegian regulations. This ensures favourable conditions for our long-term presence on the Norwegian Shelf and at the same time fulfills our strategic goals in terms of increasing gas extraction and reducing carbon dioxide emissions related to this activity – says Daniel Obajtek, CEO of ORLEN.
The Gina Krog platform was connected to the Norwegian electricity grid in October 2023 through the Johan Sverdrup extraction complex. The electrification of both facilities required the laying of about 260 km of undersea high-voltage cable. The investment significantly reduced the emission intensity of the extraction process. Without land supplies, the energy needed to power offshore extraction platforms is generated by burning the exploited natural gas. Switching to electricity generated on land essentially means switching to zero-emission energy – as much as 98% of electricity produced in Norway comes from renewable sources, of which about 90% comes from hydroelectric power plants. Thanks to this, the emission intensity related to extraction at the Gina Krog platform in 2024 will drop to 0.7 kg CO2 per barrel of oil equivalent, compared to 3.7 kg CO2 per barrel in 2023. This way, next year, the ORLEN Group will avoid emitting around 18,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide associated with the exploitation of this field.
After the acquisition of KUFPEC Norway, which should take place at the turn of 2023 and 2024, the Gina Krog field will become the main gas field of PGNiG Upstream Norway (PUN), ORLEN’s Norwegian extraction company. PUN estimates that next year it will extract about 1.35 billion cubic meters of gas from Gina Krog, which is about one third of its entire production of this raw material. The Ormen Lange field is in second place, yielding 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas and also connected to the Norwegian electricity grid. Land energy also powers the Duva field installations, from which the corporation plans to extract about 0.2 billion cubic meters of gas next year. In total, as much as 2.6 billion cubic meters, or 66% of the gas that the ORLEN Group will produce in Norway next year, will be extracted using facilities powered by 98% renewable energy. Thanks to the electrification of the Gina Krog, Ormen Lange and Duva fields, PGNiG Upstream Norway will avoid emitting 88,000 tonnes of CO2 next year.
The ORLEN Group, together with its concession partners, plans to electrify further extraction assets: the Fenris field and the Yggdrasil complex, which are currently under development. The infrastructure of Fenris and Yggdrasil will be powered by land energy from the start of production, which will avoid emitting over 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the entire exploitation period, of which PUN would account for about 1.1 million tonnes of CO2.
The electrification of fields, despite the challenges and costs associated with laying underwater power lines, plays a vital role in implementing Norwegian climate policy. According to the Norwegian government’s assumptions, by 2030, the exploration and extraction industry should reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% compared to 2005 levels. The electrification of extraction infrastructure is seen as the method with the greatest emission reduction potential, necessary to achieve the intended climate goals.
Companies operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, including PUN, also use other solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. One of them is improving extraction facility efficiency by connecting new fields to existing infrastructure, reducing emission intensity per unit of extracted hydrocarbons. In June 2023, PUN, together with its concession partners, was granted permission to start work on starting extraction from the Tyrving field, which will be developed using the Alvheim area extraction infrastructure. In addition to cost and working time reductions, the result is a reduction in emission intensity, which in the case of the Tyrving field will only be 0.3 kg of CO2 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe). In similar fashion, PUN has already achieved a significant reduction in its carbon footprint at the Verdande (intensity at the level of 1.6 kg of CO2 / boe) as well as Alve Nord and Ørn (4.5 kg CO2/boe) fields.
A reduction in the carbon footprint is also possible by improving the efficiency and modifications of individual elements of the extraction infrastructure used by PGNiG Upstream Norway. This includes variable speed drive systems in generators and compressors (used, among others, in the Skarv field), thermal and electrical energy recovery systems (Gina Krog, Skarv), or process optimization using advanced digital models (the so-called digital twin – Ormen Lange field and Nyhamna terminal).
The ORLEN Group, as the first fuel and energy corporation in Central and Eastern Europe, has declared to achieve emission neutrality by 2050. According to the strategy, by 2030 the ORLEN Group intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the exploitation of oil and gas fields by 25% compared to the 2019 level.
