Oman's largest oil producer ordered work to begin on what will be one of the biggest solar plants in the world, establishing the technology as an alternative to fossil fuels for coaxing crude out of the ground.
GlassPoint Solar Inc. will build the facility at the Amal oil field in southern Oman, according to a recent statement. Rows of parabolic mirrors covering 0.8 square mile will heat 1,021 megawatts of steam, which will be injected into underground reservoirs to reduce the viscosity of the crude produced there.
The development is a landmark both for its scale and because it shows the oil industry can tap renewables instead of its own supplies to power its own facilities. Those energy needs are vast and growing as the top grades of crude drain away, leaving producers dependent on heavier deposits.
"It's a real vote of confidence in GlassPoint, and it's quite big," said Jenny Chase, chief solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Zurich.
Petroleum Development Oman, which is 60 percent held by the government, is sponsoring the project. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, among the investors that helped GlassPoint of Fremont, Calif., raise $53 million in September, owns 34 percent of the Oman oil company. Total SA owns 4 percent.
GlassPoint said its technology can reduce energy needs by up to 80 percent at heavy oil fields where energy is needed to lift supplies out of underground rock formations. Those fields are common in California, the Middle East and Venezuela, and they typically require energy equivalent to one barrel of oil for every five produced.
GlassPoint's innovation is to install agricultural greenhouses over the fragile parabolic mirrors that heat the water, protecting the units from violent sandstorms and winds the buffet the Middle East.
"The oil and gas industry is the next major market for solar energy," said Rod MacGregor, president of GlassPoint. "Our efforts with PDO will pave the way for additional large- scale solar EOR [enhanced oil recovery] developments at oil fields around the world."
SundayMonday Business on 07/13/2015