Gulf of Mexico Energy Infrastructure Re-use and Blue Development

This work will prepare for deployment of marine hydrokinetic technologies with improved performance and lower cost to support sustainably meeting the growing energy demand while advancing profitable marine energy opportunities in the Blue Economy tightly coupled to end-user needs such as alternative fuels, energy storage and seawater desalination supporting aquaculture, agriculture, marine enviro-monitoring and eco-tourism. These technologies capturing energy from waves, ocean currents and seawater temperature differences will generate renewable electricity that supports job growth, energy security and reliability and resiliency of the power grid, leveraging the legacy Gulf of Mexico offshore oil industry infrastructure, talent pool and supply chain. Hundreds of marine renewable energy technology concepts have been screened including wind, wave, current, tidal and ocean thermal energy conversion. Marine hydrokinetic energy conversion systems present excellent potential relative to the other technologies when balancing such metrics as levelized cost of energy, technical complexity, scalability, operability and end-user/application versatility. In work preceding this Phase, a handful of systems have been identified, featuring attributes in constructability, commercialization, modularity and portability. This Phase concerns the planning for deployment of specific marine hydrokinetic energy conversion technologies to provide prime mover and source energy for seawater desalination, hydro-electric energy, hydraulic pumping power and energy storage. The Gulf of Mexico currently has hundreds of platforms, being shut down and removed yearly as required by law for “idle iron”. These platforms provide significant ecosystem services and can be used for marine renewable energy and other marine-related uses, such as offshore aquaculture and scientific research and restoration. Hence, these co-located, platform-based, marine-related uses and “blue techs” are shovel ready for the launch of the Blue Economy1 in the Gulf region. The capital synergy of this legacy infrastructure creates significant economic potential for these technologies. This application focuses on technology transfer via repurposing these legacy platforms as modular Blue Economy demonstrations, then scaled to Blue Economy hubs under future applications. These hubs, in addition to desalination and aquaculture, will support carbon-neutral fuel generation, via seawater derived hydrogen and atmospheric carbon dioxide, powered by marine hydrokinetic systems on/adjacent to the platforms. The “syn-fuel” then transported using existing infrastructure, converted into carbon-neutral transportation fuels and used for chemicals and plastics. Commercial applications and other benefits of deploying hydrokinetic technologies, include: the development of industry and growth of the Blue Economy using repurposed offshore platforms and incumbent oil and gas infrastructure as a pathway for economic demonstration; producing carbon-neutral solutions in the liquid fuel value chain with zero disruption at the consumer level, preserve intrinsic value of existing energy infrastructure, and; provision of alternatives to the technical burden and added cost of electrification of society via green fuels. The team integrates a non-profit research partner, marine research end user, an aquaculture development firm, technology developers for desalination and fuel generation and a consulting firm to provide the needed met-ocean and environmental assessment capabilities. This concept has been in development for over eighteen months. Agreements with platform owners and permits with Bureau of Ocean Energy will be finalized in this Phase. Key focus will be system integration, platform mounting, market/end-user studies, infrastructure and logistics assessments, commerciality verification and the “for-tender” scopes of work and technical specs as deliverables of this phase and segue to Phase II which will include offshore mobilization and construction of the demonstration systems.