Selection of Power From Shore for Offshore Oil and Gas Developments

With a step out distance of 170 km and a design power of 55MW, Martin Linge offshore gas field, will be the longest AC submarine cable power supplying an entire offshore Oil and Gas platform from the shore. This field development comprises a platform with a jack up rig and a Floating Storage Offloading unit. This paper discusses the criteria to consider and select a power from shore concept instead of an offshore Gas Turbine power plant which is the current practice in the offshore Oil and Gas industry. Since in a first approach, for such long step-out distance, the choice of power from shore would be to select a DC transmission line, the paper discusses the design and the main technical challenges of this long step-out AC transmission development. Finally, the system approach, required for the development of the onshore and offshore part of the project, is described.