The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has arranged a comprehensive long-term financing package of $250m for construction of a $1bn combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in Turkey.

The 950MW plant is located near Kirikkale city in Central Anatolia, around 50 km east of Ankara. It is expected to support the growing power requirements in the country.

Acwa Guc Elektrik Isletme ve Yonetim Sanayi ve Ticaret, a Turkish subsidiary of ACWA Power, will be developing the project, which is anticipated to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 1,825,000t annually.

EBRD Power and Energy director Nandita Parshad said: “This is a landmark transaction for many reasons. It brings together international financial institutions and commercial banks to lend on similar terms, offers the longest tenor to date, 16 years, for a power project in Turkey and is also the first time in Turkey that an independent power producer is financed on a limited-recourse basis.”

ACWA Power president and CEO Paddy Padmanathan added: “The Kirikkale power project, which when completed will be a highly competitive electricity generator, is the company’s first investment in Turkey.

“It is a solid foundation for the multi-fuel power-generation portfolio we seek to establish in this thriving economy.

“The project represents yet another milestone in ACWA Power’s market expansion beyond the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.”

The Norwegian state-owned enterprise Statnett has received approval for two licenses from the the country’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy for two 1,400MW power interconnectors – one to Germany and the other to the UK.

The license approvals boost Norway’s interconnection capacity by almost 50%.

Commissioning of the cables to Germany and the UK are likely to be in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

Statnett, which is responsible for owning, operating and constructing stem power grid in Norway, owns both the interconnectors.

The firm will work with Germany’s system operator TenneT and the German state-owned bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) for the Norway-Germany project, which is called project Nord.Link, and will connect Tonstad in Norway and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany.

UK system operator National Grid will co-ordinate with the firm for setting up the Norway-UK project, called as North Sea Network (NSN).

According to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, the sub-sea cable connector between Kvilldal in Norway and Blyth in the UK will be the longest of its kind in the world.

Statnett executive vice-president Håkon Borgen said: “The two new interconnectors will be key parts of the next generation power system and will contribute to greater security of supply and more value creation in Norway.

“They will also pave the way for increased utilisation of renewable energy, and thereby for reaching the climate targets in Norway and our partner countries.”

Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Tord Lien said: “Interconnection with Germany and the UK will give a better utilisation of the power systems and create economic benefits.

“These cables are important for successfully increasing our share of renewable energy.”

Norwegian Minister for Climate and Environment Tine Sundtoft said: “The electricity interconnectors will contribute to Norwegian renewable energy, replacing fossil energy in Europe and will facilitate green value creation in Norway.”

A major study on the oil and gas sector by UK based Lloyd’s Register Energy has revealed that technology will have a high impact on extending the life of existing assets and for enhanced oil and gas recovery (EOR).

Instead of a single breakthrough, innovation is drawing on a wide range of technologies.

The Technology Radar Survey was launched at the start of 2014 to find out about the impact of innovation and investment by operators in America, Europe and Asia.

The study revealed factors like safety improvements (45%), improving operational efficiency (44%) and reducing costs (43%) to be major investment drivers across the industry, which are closely followed by accessibility of new reserves (29%) and increasing asset lifespan (27%).

Automation and remote and subsea operation have been identified as solutions to cope with challenging environments in the near term.

High-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) drilling and multi-stage fracking are also expected to have significant impact, but these are likely to be completely deployed only from 2020.

Around 73% of the participants believed that the innovation rate is increasing and around 68% wanted to raise R&D budgets within the next two years.

Of those surveyed, 58% agreed that future breakthroughs involve ‘bits and bytes’ and not physical hardware.

Lloyd’s Register Energy director John Wishart said: “In the near term, automation and EOR are expected to have the greatest impact on the sector; in the medium term, it is high-pressure, high-temperature drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing; from 2025 and beyond, subsea robotics is seen as most promising.

“Initiatives that nurture technical innovation can no longer be an afterthought for business or government; they must be central to any organisation’s strategy for sustainable growth and leadership. They are central to our growth too”.

“Adapting that sort of thinking into what we do is going to be a very interesting part of how we move forward. We are driving the development of new concepts and technologies through collaborative R&D, and our focus is firmly on innovation — to benefit our clients and society’s future.”

UK Onshore Operations Group, Woodside Energy, Enertech, Maersk Drilling, TouGas Oilfield Solutions, Horton Wison Deepwater, Royal Dutch Shell, GE Oil & Gas were the survey participants among others.

DONG Energy has installed the first offshore wind Suction Bucket Jacket at its Borkum Riffgrund 1 offshore wind farm in Germany.

GeoSea, a subsidiary of the Belgian Deme group, was in charge of the floating load out, transport and installation of this wind turbine jacket foundation.

SPT Offshore was in charge of the suction process.

Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) from the UK also collaborated with Dong Energy to test the new foundation concept.

Situated 37km away from the North West coast of Germany, the Borkum Riffgrund 1 offered an ideal testing ground due to its sandy seabed.

The installation vessel Pacific Orca, which was supplied by DONG Energy, is presently demobilising in Eemshaven.

Tideway, a sister concern of GeoSea, will soon install the armour stones.

DONG Energy vice-president Tove Feld said: “It’s a great day for us. We’ve now installed the very first suction bucket jacket in the offshore wind industry.

“The reduction in cost of electricity and our ability to utilise some of the more challenging sites further from shore and in deeper water show some of the potential that this concept has.

“I’m very excited to see that the cooperation between the partners in this project, not least with Carbon Trust in the UK, is paying off with specific results.”

The Suction Bucket Jacket (SBJ) technology had been previously used for offshore oil and gas foundations and offers economic and environmental benefits.

The design of the 850t suction bucket jacket comprises three legs that are welded together in a jacket structure, standing on top of three huge suction buckets anchoring the foundation to the seabed.

A lightweight structure, it only requires a single operation when the foundation is installed offshore, thereby cutting down the time of the installation and reducing the costs of electricity from offshore wind.

Image: The offshore wind Suction Bucket Jacket being installed on the Borkum Riffgrund 1 offshore wind farm. Photo: © 2014 DEME.

Two days ago UK based engineering firm Olympus Automation (OAL) were approached by the president of Azersun, the leading food producer in Azerbaijan, for a rapid cooking system to feed refugees in Northern Iraq. The president was so appalled by the plight of the refugees stuck on mount Sinjar he has chosen to fund the equipment himself.
Time is clearly of the essence and managing director, Harry Norman, of OAL has been quick to respond and a system will be shipped in record time next week. Norman, states:
“Normally systems take 24 weeks to manufacture, but this is clearly not a normal situation, lives are at stake and we will be able to deliver a Steam Infusion cooking system in a week. Steam Infusion is 4 times faster than traditional processes making the equipment ideal for feeding lots of people, hence the call from the president.”
OAL will be flying application specialist Stuart Rigby to an undisclosed location in Turkey to provide training on the system before it is deployed in Northern Iraq.
OAL are supplying a simple cooking system based on its revolutionary Steam Infusion technology to make lentil soups, rice and provide a clean source for drinking and washing water. The cooking system uses will use Steam Infusion, OAL’s revolutionary heating and mixing process to make 4,000 portions of hot food an hour.
Follow us on Twitter, @OALgroup

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe (MHPS-EDE), a group company of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS), has been awarded a contract to construct a lignite-fired ultra-supercritical-pressure thermal power unit at Turów, Poland

Under the contract JPY110bn ($1.08bn), the consortium of the three companies will develop a 450MW power unit for a power generation company under the corporate umbrella of Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), a state-controlled power provider in Poland.

MHPS’s proprietary technologies in low-grade coal combustion for boilers will be used for the project to enable efficient use of lignite.

The plant is scheduled to commence operations in the middle of 2019 and the new unit, once completed, will respond to robust electric power demand accompanying Poland’s steady economic growth.

MHPS-EDE-led consortium comprises civil engineering company Budimex SA and the engineering firm Técnicas Reunidas.

The newly built unit of Turów power plant will feature a boiler, steam turbine, condenser, power generator, instrumentation and control equipment and desulfurisation equipment.

MHPS and MHPS-EDE will be responsible for all aspects from core equipment manufacture and supply to test operation, whereas Budimex and Técnicas Reunidas will be responsible for civil engineering, construction, installation, electrical machinery and other activities.

MHPS will continue to apply its low-grade coal combustion technologies for high-efficiency ultra-supercritical pressure boilers.

Approximately 90% of the gross power generation of Poland relies on coal firing and the country has one of the world’s largest reserves of coal.

The European Union threatened to renew tariffs on biodiesel from the U.S. for another five years in a sign of persistent trade tensions over renewable energy.

WILLISTON, North Dakota (AP) — North Dakota has joined the ranks of the few places in the world that produce more than a million barrels of oil per day, due in large part to the rich Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state.

The April figures released Tuesday by the state’s Department of Mineral Resources showed the record tally. North Dakota had flirted with the million-barrel-per-day mark for months, but the harsh winter slowed the pace. In March, production had hit 977,000 barrels per day.

North Dakota’s oil fields now represent more than 12 percent of all U.S. oil production, and more than 1 percent of global production — a situation unfathomable just a decade ago, when technology hadn’t yet caught up to the challenge of extracting oil from the shale. Since then, the oil boom and the jobs it brings have transformed North Dakota, now home to the nation’s fastest-growing cities and its lowest unemployment rate.

“Reaching the 1 million barrel a day mark is a tremendous and timely milestone for the petroleum industry and our state, but it is also a tremendous milestone for our nation,” U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, a Republican, said in a statement, citing the need for the United States to build its domestic energy resources.

North Dakota joins Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana as the only states ever to produce more than a million barrels per day. Of those, Texas is the only other state still producing above that level.

“Until April, only Texas, one Canadian province and 19 countries were producing 1 million barrels per day, putting North Dakota among the top oil producers in the entire world,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an oil lobbying group.

The state’s production is still dwarfed by behemoths such as Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest producer with nearly 10 million barrels of oil per day.

But North Dakota’s ascent has been rapid. Whereas eastern Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field, the top-producing oil field in the world with 5 million barrels a day, has been operational since 1951, North Dakota’s oil fields have surged from producing 80,000 to 90,000 barrels per day a decade ago.

The Bakken and the Three Forks formation below it, which also stretch into Montana and Canada’s Saskatchewan province, account for the vast majority of North Dakota’s oil production.

Oil was first struck in western North Dakota in 1951 near the town of Tioga, but for decades, the area confounded oil producers, giving up trickles while promising potentially enormous gains. After a smaller oil boom went bust in the 1980s, many gave up on the state as a big oil producer. At one point in 1999, no drilling rigs remained in North Dakota.

But just over half a decade ago, advances in directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing finally unlocked the oil packed into the Bakken shale formation.

Now “North Dakota could be an OPEC country of its own in terms of production — it’s essentially the production of Ecuador,” said James Fallon, director of downstream energy at global information firm IHS.

Together with Texas’ Permian Basin and Eagle Ford oil plays, North Dakota’s production has played a pivotal role in turning U.S. production around in the past few years after more than 30 years of decline and cutting down on petroleum imports he added. Fallon said it is likely that because of these oil plays, the U.S. will surpass its 1970 production high of 9.64 million barrels per day within the next year and a half.

Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources’ Oil and Gas Division, said he expects North Dakota production to grow to 1.5 million barrels per day by 2017 before plateauing.

Besides the influx of jobs, high salaries have skewed the economy of the oil patch, with one-bedroom apartments renting for $2,000 a month. Police departments, health care services, schools, roads and other public services and infrastructure have struggled to keep up with the growth in the western part of the state.

Despite the trials that oil development has brought, the boom has largely been welcomed at a time when jobs can be hard to come by elsewhere in the U.S.

The US Bureau of Land Management released an environmental assessment for Noble Energy Inc.’s proposed Huntington Valley natural gas project 7 miles from Jiggs, Nev., an unincorporated community 30 miles south of Elko. Comments will be accepted on it through June 4, BLM said.

The Houston independent plans to drill as many as 20 wells over 2 years on a mixture of public and private land, BLM’s Elko District Office said on May 22. Drilling pads and roads would be constructed, and existing roads would be maintained or constructed to accommodate rig and support vehicle traffic, it said. Hydraulic fracturing may be used, it added.

The project’s 15 leases encompass 63,495 acres, the notice said. There would be 425.8 acres of total anticipated surface disturbance, including 287.8 acres of public land (0.45% of the total project area) and 138 acres of private surface with federal mineral rights (0.21% of the total area).

While Noble Energy has identified 39 possible well pad locations on its Huntington Valley holdings, only 20 wells actually would be drilled, limiting actual disturbance of both public and private surface to 311.8 acres (0.49% of the total project area), BLM’s notice said.

Russia-based Gazprom has signed a contract worth $400bn (€292bn) with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) to supply natural gas.

Under the contract, Gazprom will supply 38 billion cubic metres of gas annually to CNPC for a period of 30 years.

The gas will be supplied through a pipeline from Russia to China via the eastern route, which is estimated to start in 2018.

Gazprom will be responsible for gas field development and construction of the gas processing plants and pipeline sections in Russia.

Meanwhile, CNPC will be responsible for the building pipeline sections, gas storages and other supporting facilities in China.

CNPC said that the major gas sources will be Kovyktinskoye in the Irkutsk region and Chayandinskoye in Yakutia.

Gazprom management committee chairman Alexey Miller said Russia and China have signed the biggest contract in the entire history of the USSR and Gazprom – more than 1 trillion cubic meters of gas will be supplied during a whole contractual period.Russian gas will be sold at a brand new market with a huge potential.

Miller said, “The arrangement of Russian pipeline gas supplies is the biggest investment project on a global scale. $55bn will be invested in the construction of production and transmission facilities in Russia.

“An extensive gas infrastructure network will be set up in Russia’s East, which will drive the local economy forward. Great impetus will be given to entire economic sectors, namely metallurgy, pipe and machine building.”

Gazprom and CNPC have signed the agreement that came after more than a decade of negotiations, which were repeatedly stalled over the price.

The contract was signed in the presence of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping.