The Role of Regulatory Compliance in the E&P Data Lifecycle

The UK Regulatory Landscape Compliance has historically been an afterthought, sitting out with the core data management lifecycle, side-lined in favour of operational activity and prioritising demand on resource-constrained teams.

Internal pressures often left the data and information lifecycle hanging, with the impetus and energy to close out dwindling, likely driven by a lack of realisation of the value that compliance can derive when done effectively.

Times have changed, the data and information landscape has shifted with the realisation of the value that effectively governed data sets can yield, focusing organisations to target data in the search for operational effectiveness, innovation, competitive advantage, and value realisation.

The UK Government, through the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), has a directive to maximise the value of UK energy assets and deliver sustainability and security within the UK energy ecosystem. To support this push, it must ensure that the UK’s digital energy assets are optimised and accessible to support hydrocarbon, alternative energy and decarbonising initiatives, inevitably the desire to achieve its goals is being felt by Operators and their compliance teams.

The Regulatory Impact upon the E&P data lifecycle

Recent changes in regulatory requirements have driven the implementation of more structured and standardised workflows throughout the E&P data lifecycle, driving the innovative adaptation of existing processes for data collection, management, analysis, and reporting to reduce time to insight.

The development and widespread adoption of technology advances, specifically data mining, content analytics, cognitive search, GeoSpatial Analytics and data visualisation within better integrated information architectures have no doubt accelerated and streamlined compliance workflows.

Compliance specialists need to keep pace with evolving regulations and industry best practices, continually building on core data competencies, increasingly needing to combine digital skills (either their own or supporting teams), data engineering and low-code techniques to leverage the full technology capability on offer in the marketplace.

Regulatory compliance has further highlighted the value in our trusted digital data assets. Our data professionals must keep pace with change and adapt their reporting behaviours to suit an evolving audience.

The role of the ISC

It is imperative that organisations acknowledge compliance as a long-term investment which delivers cumulative value. Encouraging positive behaviours, developing, and supporting robust processes and a governance-minded culture throughout a business drives the ongoing cost of compliance down.

The role of an Information and Samples Coordinator not only involves managing the flow of information and physical samples, ensuring accuracy and quality, coordinating communication, and continuously improving processes related to information and sample management but also to drive the behavioural adoption and change required to integrate compliance best practice into an organisation’s Business-as-usual.

Sword provides experienced compliance and information managers to perform the ISC role for our clients, equally importantly we provide the support that ISC’s require to ensure the demands of the role are met, especially during periods of peak activity, such as the infrastructure submissions and looming UK NSTA calls for data.

Compliance Driven-Value

Transparency, clarity and domain understanding are essential to determining a company’s regulatory stance and their compliance deficit. Navigating the enormity of an organisations digital and physical assets to “plug” the deficit can be a daunting prospect. Known for providing the expertise and knowledge required to shape and deliver compliance services, Sword specialises in delivering achievable and sustainable technical solutions to support all aspects of managing compliance and the broader data and information domain.

Whether leveraging data science and machine learning to automate data mining, classification, and data extraction of unstructured data, or delivering GeoSpatial environments to transform the way you present and connect your data with external information sources to support an integrated digital infrastructure, data compliance enables you to fully realise the value of your data.

The compliance landscape is no longer static, it is continually evolving, accelerating towards supporting sustainable integrated energy systems, which will require an equally integrated, aligned and compliant data ecosystem. Recognising the demand and anticipating the change are essential to ensuring we maintain the trust and realise the value in our digital data assets.

RENEWABLES

Cerulean Winds set out ambitions for North Sea Renewables Grid

Green infrastructure developer Cerulean Winds recently unveiled plans to develop the North Sea Renewable Grid (NSRG), a £20 billion integrated green power and transmission system, powered by floating wind, that oil and gas platforms will plug into for clean power.

Partnering with Frontier Power and uniting a dedicated consortium of world leading industrial partners, the development will be one of the country’s largest-scale infrastructure projects designed to deliver on the energy sector emissions reduction targets.

Founders, Dan Jackson and Mark Dixon have substantial expertise in the development and delivery of major offshore and deepwater energy projects and have founded and developed businesses in the global energy arena over 20-plus years.

The NSRG will see Cerulean develop three 333 square kilometre sites of hundreds of floating wind turbines, producing multiple gigawatts (GW) of electricity, after being offered the lion’s share of seabed leases in the recent Crown Estate Scotland INTOG leasing round. Dan Jackson sheds further light on the development and its implications for the sector, economy and supply chain.

What is the North Sea Renewables Grid?

The North Sea Renewables Grid is a large-scale offshore renewable power grid that will have the ability to provide clean power from floating wind to oil and gas platforms anywhere in the UK Continental Shelf.

It will link hundreds of offshore turbines with high-voltage cables to transmit green energy to oil and gas production facilities in the North Sea.

We plan to develop the grid in phases, with phase one focused on providing a clean power source for the North Sea’s oil and gas industry. Later phases will help to further commercially scale up renewable power for homes and businesses across the UK and beyond.

The scale and location of our three floating wind sites in the Central North Sea enables a basin-wide transmission approach, which will allow oil and gas operators a flexible option for removing millions of tonnes of production emissions by trading gas and diesel generation for a flexible, cost effective and cleaner alternative.

Each windfarm site is located within 100km of the others and will be connected together to form the offshore ring main around the Central North Sea. A High Voltage Alternating Current (HVAC) transmission will provide availability and redundancy for maximising generation uptime. The scale allows for offtake to other parts of the North Sea through a new High Voltage Direct Current (HDVC) network.

Why is basin-wide decarbonisation important?

The sector has signed up to the North Sea Transition Deal (NSTD) targets, but the challenge now is decarbonising production at scale whilst continuing to prioritise UK energy security.

The targets set by the NSTD demand urgent action. Operators have made it clear they are ready to act now to achieve these goals but cannot do so without a dependable and cost-effective solution in place.

We recognise that to achieve meaningful reductions at the pace required, a basin-wide solution is necessary. By taking this integrated approach, we are offering organisations a reliable and flexible power source which they can plug into once they have completed any necessary brownfield works and are ready to make the switch to renewable power.

What is the benefit to oil and gas operators?

Currently, there are limited options for operators to reduce their production emissions and scale is required to hit the 50% reduction by 2030 target set out in the NSTD. Our goal is to provide them with a risk-free solution that will allow them to switch to renewable power as soon as they are ready through standardised Power Purchase Agreements.

Having hundreds of turbines in place over three locations provides the baseline required to build out the grid with a level of consistency that is demanded by the oil and gas industry, this provides redundancy in supply. The basin-wide scale allows us to be reactive, while maintaining lower pricing and supply robustness. For the oil and gas companies, the diversity of offtake through the HDVC network provides robustness to the scheme and further lowers their offtake costs through simple economies of scale. The intent is to minimise the ‘infill’ power from the grid when the wind is not blowing, and the scale of the wind farms provides this.

What delivery partners does Cerulean have on board?

Our delivery consortium brings together a suite of tier-one industrial partners to develop, supply and install the NSRG. This includes NOV, Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy, DEME and Worley. Each partner brings a unique skill set to the project that will enable us to fast-track phase one of building out the grid. Never before in the UK has such a consortium been put in place at the early development stage, however this is necessary to provide the confidence the scheme can be delivered on schedule and to budget.

Each of our partners has experience delivering large-scale projects for the offshore oil and gas industry in the North Sea. Their understanding of the region and supply chain are invaluable in allowing us to deliver such an ambitious project at pace.

Why did Cerulean partner with Frontier Power?

Frontier Power was an easy first choice to partner with for this project. Their founders are both ex-National Grid senior executives and they have an impressive track record of delivering large transactions in the power sector, with over £1.5billion of offshore transmission assets under management. They have already delivered an interconnector between the UK and Germany and are developing a UK to Netherlands HVDC link.

The wealth of knowledge and experience they have accumulated assures us that they have the capabilities and prowess to facilitate power transmission on a mammoth scale.

Identifying and achieving regulatory and statutory changes, along with an in-depth insight into the UK grid access process from the team’s time working with the National Grid, provides us with great insight into how to seamlessly rollout grid access for clients across the North Sea. The strength of an integrated offshore transmission and floating wind development team is the key to success.

What timeline is Cerulean working to?

Our target is to have electrons flowing to meet the NSTD milestones for 2027 and 2030, which is crucial for both the UK and Scottish governments to demonstrate they are delivering on their climate change ambitions.

Further, we are aiming to build out before ScotWind developments start. This will allow the supply chain to respond, creating crucial partnering opportunities for the ports and getting the market ready to deliver floating wind at scale.

Early oil and gas electrification supports the country’s energy security, net zero action and delivers huge benefits to the supply chain and economy. We have fast-tracked phase one of the NSRG to prioritise this, to give the oil and gas operators access to green energy as quickly as we can, with flexibility and reliability. Work with end users has begun in earnest so that we can aim for the first power availability in 2027. Further phases will focus on exporting green power to the grids in UK and Europe.

What is the opportunity for Scotland and its supply chain?

It’s all about scale. The vast amounts of infrastructure required will provide a pipeline of work over many years and provide the opportunity for ports and yards to invest now in expansions ahead of ScotWind, getting the market ready to deliver.

Scotland is one of the most investable countries in the world for large-scale infrastructure in green energy because of its supply chain, which has built up an enviable legacy of expertise from responding to oil and gas projects over half a century.

By creating over 10,000 jobs, this type of ambitious renewable project will help scale Scotland’s green economy. It will make a material impact on the country’s emissions, removing millions of tonnes of CO2 a year to support a just transition. In total, the three windfarms alone will contribute over £12 billion GVA to the UK’s economy.

What’s next?

We will continue our engagement with the supply chain on the packages of work including the tri-floater and with the oil and gas operators on the impact we can make to their emissions reduction ambitions. We want to partner and help make this a smooth transition. We appreciate that the timescales are challenging for the operators and will bring our experience and flexibility to streamline this as much as possible.

Further down the line the direct export route to Europe is a huge opportunity for Scotland to be a globally leading exporter of clean energy, which will provide further economic value. Wind is a reliable source of energy in Scotland, particularly in the deeper offshore waters, so this is a real chance to set the North Sea up for providing the next half a century and beyond of secure energy production.

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