Governments and organizations worldwide have been pursuing the progressive abandonment of fossil fuels as energy sources to reduce global CO2 emissions. On oil and gas (O&G) upstream assets, photovoltaics and wind turbines are the most widespread means of providing "green" electrical power because of their wide availability and technical maturity. However, harvesting marine wave energy has also become an attractive choice due to recent technology advances and the large number of offshore assets that are reaching their "end of life." Eni is currently involved in many R&D projects aiming to demonstrate the suitability of wave-energy technologies in O&G operations. In late 2018, an Ocean Power Technologies "PB3" wave energy converter (WEC), was deployed in the Adriatic Sea offshore Ravenna near the Amelia B platform, to assess its performance, reliability, and possible future adoption for low-power, remotely controlled applications such as marine environmental monitoring, Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) battery recharging, and subsea wellhead power supply. The PB3 system is a point-absorber WEC that generates electricity from the relative heave motion of an annular float with respect to a spar, on which the float is installed. The energy produced can either be stored in rechargeable lithium battery packs for future use or consumed immediately by connected payloads. In the Adriatic Sea project, the generated power is transferred from the PB3 via a submarine cable to a subsea mockup to demonstrate the ability to support subsea AUV battery charging and remote marine sensors control. In nearly 2 years of deployment, the system collected continuous performance data and demonstrated its potential of this technology to support a resident AUV program in which an offshore subsea charging station provides power and data transfer to support O&G inspection, maintenance, and repair operations.
Over the past several years, Eni has been involved in a research and development (R&D) program known as Marine Renewable Energy (MaREnergy), aiming to develop, deploy, and demonstrate the suitability of wave energy renewable technologies for use in oil & gas (O&G) operations. To advance both that vision and Eni's R&D of proprietary integrated subsea technologies, a PB3 wave energy converter (WEC) of Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. (OPT) was deployed on 14 November 2018 in the Adriatic Sea. The purpose was to enable wave-energy-powered remotely controlled field developments, environmental monitoring, and offshore asset integrity inspection using Eni's CLEAN SEA autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) initiative.
