Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Fuels
Sec. Non-Carbon-Based Fuels
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/ffuel.2025.1464944
This article is part of the Research Topic Women in Fuel Science and Technology View all 5 articles

A Geographic Information Systems Selection Approach to Repurposing Offshore Oil & Gas Assets for Green Hydrogen Production

Provisionally accepted
William Rupp William Rupp Ruoyang Yuan Ruoyang Yuan *
  • The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Integrating green hydrogen production with existing oil and gas infrastructure is seen as viable step for the reutilization of oil and gas assets. Green hydrogen production through offshore wind has the potential to extend the lives of these systems, reduce decommissioning costs and provide a source of clean energy. This paper presents an outlook on wind license areas using existing oil and gas infrastructure. Three scenarios are proposed for the conversion of offshore assets into wind turbine sites, including the conversion of a platform into a substation. A methodology is provided to assess the suitability of offshore wind using exclusion criteria and the cessation of production dates for oil and gas infrastructure. This methodology is applied to the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and the results show that 7.4% of the UK EEZ is within the top suitability index for wind turbine development. The cost of green hydrogen production from different offshore locations is estimated to be in the range of 9.78-11.76 £/kgH2 depending on the wind farm scale and the distance. The study highlights the potential for using existing infrastructure for wind turbine development and provides valuable insights for stakeholders in the energy industry.

    Keywords: Hydrogen, Offshore wind, Geographic Information Systems, Lcoh, Repurposing Offshore O&G

    Received: 15 Jul 2024; Accepted: 24 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Rupp and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ruoyang Yuan, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, England, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.