Independent North Sea producer Serica Energy (AIM: SQZ) has been served with an improvement notice by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over the release of fuel gas at its Bruce platform. According to the HSE, Serica allowed the release of 196kg of hydrocarbons for over two and a half hours. In addition, the HSE said that Serica’s workers were put at risk due to the presence of gas. However, a spokesperson for Serica Energy said that nobody was injured due to the release. The HSE blamed the release on Serica’s maintenance arrangements for one the platform’s low-pressure booster compressors (LPBC A), which “failed such that the gas fuel supply system and joints were inadequately reinstated and tested” before the compressor was returned to service. The spokesperson added: “Safety remains Serica’s highest priority, and the company is working closely with the HSE to ensure lessons are learned from the incident and updated procedures are put in place to prevent a reoccurrence.” Serica has until 31 July to improve its processes. The Bruce platform is based 211 miles (340km) northeast of Aberdeen where it connects to Serica’s Bruce field. The platform is responsible for processing nearly 5% of the UK’s gas production and hosts a community of over 300 people, of whom 160 are offshore at any one time. The platform saw a short period of unscheduled downtime in 2024 due to a subsea intervention to ensure enhanced production reliability on the Rhum field. Serica chief executive Chris Cox has previously said that the company is looking to take advantage of the “untapped potential around the Bruce hub”. The group has committed to extend Bruce’s lifespan by an extra four years through to 2030, with Cox hinting that a drilling campaign around the field is likely in coming years. The group

Aberdeen’s Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC) said “it’s not good enough” that UK decommissioning technology is tested overseas when “we are meant to be the leaders in this space”. At an event in the Granite City’s Union Kirk, NZTC programme manager Lewis Harper argued that technology brought about by the “genius” in the domestic supply chain should have more opportunity to test in UK waters, rather than going to places like the US. Harper said technology developers often have seek opportunities to trial it: “I have to go on a flight to go 4,000 miles into a place where PPE is a shirt and Levi’s to get this technology into the well.” The not-for-profit organisation currently runs on funding from industry and the government, however, its decade of public funding is set to come to an end. In 2017, the NZTC was set up as part of the Aberdeen City Region Deal with £180 million from the UK and Scottish Governments. The organisation is readying an application for the next tranche of funding once this period ends and is set to deliver this to government in the coming weeks. This week the NZTC £500,000 in grant funding across the 11 firms that form the next cohort of its accelerator program for emerging companies in the clean energy sector. © Supplied by NSTAAn NZTC and NSTA decommissioning event in Aberdeen. “We’re not short of genius, just take a look around the room, 22 technologies on display here today and many more asking if there was space for them,” Harper added. However, he said that the “hard truth” is that “a breakthrough in the lab is not a breakthrough for our industry”. Harper argued that “proof” is what’s needed as the industry does not have a “gap of ideas”. He said: “Decades

A UK court ruled that two North Sea oil and gas fields must re-apply for environmental permits while allowing the developments to continue, setting up a crucial test of whether the new Labour government will prioritize economic growth or climate action.  The Court of Session in Edinburgh quashed the approvals for the Rosebank and Jackdaw projects — led by Equinor ASA and Shell Plc, respectively — which were unlawful because they hadn’t considered the climate impact of burning oil and gas pumped from the fields, according to a statement from the court on Thursday.  The fate of these projects has big implications for the UK North Sea, an aging oil and gas province where major new developments are dwindling. While the ruling was a victory for Greenpeace and Uplift, environmental groups that brought the legal action, it left open the possibility that the two fields could one day still come into production.  Shell and Equinor can continue working on the projects while the government considers their new environmental applications, although they will not be allowed to pump any oil and gas before a final decision is reached, according to the ruling.  It was unclear how long this decision could take. The UK government is still discussing how exactly to assess so-called Scope 3 emissions from burning a field’s oil and gas, a process that must be completed before the environmental impact assessments for Rosebank and Jackdaw can be reconsidered, according to the court ruling. “The government has already consulted on revised environmental guidance to take into account emissions from burning extracted oil and gas,” said a spokesperson for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. “We will respond to this consultation as soon as possible and developers will be able to apply for consents under this revised regime.” In

Dive Brief: Almost every major independent system operator in the U.S. has reformed its capacity accreditation process, or has started to in the wake of more frequent severe weather and the growing adoption of intermittent energy resources, Wood Mackenzie Senior Analyst Patrick Huang said during a Wednesday panel discussion. As a result of these reforms, most types of energy resources — from renewables and energy storage to thermal generation — have seen, or will see, their capacity accreditation downgraded, Huang said. The reforms have made resource planning more complicated, increasing demand for more flexible generation resources, according to Karl Meeusen, Wärtsilä’s director of markets, legislative and regulatory policy for North America. Dive Insight: Beyond rewarding utilities that adopt an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy resources, capacity accreditation reforms at U.S. ISOs could also spur utilities to take a closer look at more novel generation technologies previously considered too expensive, Meeusen said during Wednesday’s discussion, hosted by consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. Reciprocating internal combustion engines have not been adopted in large numbers by utilities in the past due to the relatively high upfront capital cost. But they could offer a greater return on investment within ISOs that have adopted capacity accreditation reforms, Meeusen said. The reciprocating engines can ramp up or down more quickly than gas turbines, which allows them to better complement intermittent resources like wind and solar, and their modular design comes with potential reliability benefits, he said. For example, a utility might choose to add 100 MW of capacity to its portfolio by deploying five reciprocating engines, or two peaker gas turbines. If one of the turbines goes down, the resulting outage will be significantly larger than if one of the five reciprocating engines goes offline, Meeusen explained. And that odds of all five engines going down at the same time are significantly

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories, excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), increased by 3.5 million barrels from the week ending January 17 to the week ending January 24, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) highlighted in its latest weekly petroleum status report. The report, which was released on January 29 and included data for the week ending January 24, showed that crude oil stocks, not including the SPR, stood at 415.1 million barrels on January 24, 411.7 million barrels on January 17, and 421.9 million barrels on January 26, 2024. The EIA report highlighted that data may not add up to totals due to independent rounding. Crude oil in the SPR stood at 394.8 million barrels on January 24, 394.6 million barrels on January 17, and 357.4 million barrels on January 26, 2024, the report showed. Total petroleum stocks – including crude oil, total motor gasoline, fuel ethanol, kerosene type jet fuel, distillate fuel oil, residual fuel oil, propane/propylene, and other oils – stood at 1.608 billion barrels on January 24, the report revealed. This figure was down 13.6 million barrels week on week and up 19.2 million barrels year on year, the report outlined. “At 415.1 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about six percent  below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA noted in its report. “Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 3.0 million barrels from last week and are slightly below the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories and blending components inventories increased last week,” it added. “Distillate fuel inventories decreased by 5.0 million barrels last week and are about nine percent below the five year average for this time of year,” the EIA continued. “Propane/propylene inventories decreased by 7.9 million barrels from last week

Dive Brief: First Public Hydrogen, or FPH2, a public utility created by the California cities of Lancaster and Industry, began the process of selecting hydrogen suppliers at a Jan. 13 board meeting, following the finalization of the 45V clean hydrogen production tax credit guidance. Although FPH2 aims to avoid dependence on the 45V tax credits, the incentives are critical to driving hydrogen adoption, according to R. Rex Parris, mayor of the City of Lancaster and chair of the FPH2 board. By acting as a public intermediary between buyers and sellers of hydrogen, FPH2 aims to make hydrogen more accessible, affordable and transparent, Parris said in an interview with Utility Dive. Dive Insight: California has a series of advantages for producing hydrogen — including an exemption from the energy procurement standards set earlier this month by the final 45V hydrogen tax credit guidance. While the tax credit played a key role in the timing of when the cities of Lancaster and Industry chose to launch FPH2, Parris said he believes there is a path for other municipalities to follow suit. “While there are challenges at the national level, we believe the combination of 45V incentives and state-level initiatives will drive the necessary growth in renewable energy and hydrogen production to achieve scale,” Parris said. “That said, collaboration between states, the federal government, and private industry will be essential to ensuring sufficient supply.” FPH2, which launched in December, has set a goal to secure 20,000 tons of clean hydrogen by July. The hydrogen utility plans to serve as an aggregator between suppliers of hydrogen and would-be customers, including municipalities, other public utilities, transit agencies, and private sector companies in industries such as logistics, shipping and transportation, Parris said. FPH2 will partner with private industry leaders to build out the physical infrastructure needed to