Statoil technology boosts oil and gas markets

August 15, 2013 | Products, Services & Techniques

statoil_logo (460 x 300)Hydraulic fracturing has revolutionised the extractive industry in recent years. The technological marvel has revitalised the US’s lacklustre energy prospects and come to offer a greater promise of economic prosperity to regions across the globe. It is for these reasons and many more like it that companies such as Norway’s Statoil have invested heavily in fracking exploration of late.

Statoil’s recent efforts to tap huge gas reserves worth an estimated $30bn began last week 125 miles off Norway’s coast with the launch of a huge underwater compressor, which, if successful, should allow gas to be retrieved at half the energy cost it would otherwise have required.

“Fossil fuels will play a major and necessary part of the energy mix for a long period of time. Our goal is to extract these resources in the most energy – and carbon efficient – way possible,” claimed Statoil’s Elin Isaksen.

Isaksen also told World Finance that the potential of this new technology could have huge ramifications for the oil and gas markets. “New energy reserves are discovered in the planet’s most inaccessible regions. In some of these areas platforms will be either impossible or too expensive to build. Subsea factory could be the solution in these areas. Statoil’s goal is to have the technology available to build a subsea factory by 2020.

Statoil’s efforts to extract fossil fuels offer an insight into the ever-evolving oil and gas industry at present, and the ways in which it’s attempting to boost efficiency on both environmental and financial grounds.

Source: Worldfinance