UK Oil & Gas plc has unveiled plans for hydrogen storage and generation at a former naval harbour at Portland in Dorset.
The scheme, announced today to shareholders, will need planning permission and development finance, UKOG said in a statement.
The project aims to “reinvigorate” and develop further a previously unrealised scheme by Portland Gas Storage. This was granted planning permission in 2008 for gas storage in an underground salt cavern.
UKOG said the revised scheme now included:
- Hydrogen-ready energy hub
- Construction of up to 43 billion cubic feet of storage in salt caverns for hydrogen or methane gas
- New pipeline from the storage to the national transmission system
- New LNG import facility at Portland Port
If achieved, the scheme would “materially increase” the UK’s underground gas storage, currently reported at 61 billion cubic feet, UKOG said. The pipeline could handle approximately 14% of current estimated UK daily gas consumption, the company added.
UKOG said the scheme could “transition seamlessly” into green hydrogen production and storage as the “hydrogen economy evolves”.
UKOG chief executive, Stephen Sanderson, said the scheme was fully in keeping with the government’s energy security and hydrogen strategies and the National Grid’s 2021 future energy scenarios.
He said the proposal could:
“both materially strengthen the UK energy system’s resilience to supply and demand shocks, plus provide the foundations for a potentially significant and strategic element of the future green hydrogen economy”.
The statement said UKOG’s subsidiary UK Energy Storage Limited has signed a lease with Portland Port Limited for two sites at the former harbour.
It added that detailed engineering and commercial studies would be completed before submission of a planning application. The development is expected to qualify as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project and would be decided by a planning inspector or the local government secretary, rather local authority.
- Last year, UKOG announced plans for a geothermal energy hub at its site at Horse Hill in Surrey.
Update
On 22 June 2022, UKOG reported that the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, had welcomed its storage plans for Portland. The company published a letter.
DRILL OR DROP? 
I wonder when they will finish something?
Powerfuel Portland is proposing to deliver an Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) at Portland Port in a £100+ million investment. Powerfuel submitted its planning application for the ERF on 7 September 2020 which is currently being considered by Dorset Council.
http://www.powerfuelportland.co.uk/Home
2 similar schemes in the same area? Looks like they have a head start.
That’s the thing with hubs. You tend to get several operations in the same place! Especially if there are good port facilities, which have become under used.
(I did like the point about wind generation being over the horizon, as I recall there are big issues in this area with industrial infrastructure being plonked in the sea within sight of those spending their money to enjoy a natural coastline!)
Meanwhile, Rough to be patched up and re-opened, coal fired to be continued, and decommissioning of old nuclear to be paused (maybe), and the admission that Norwegian gas could be diverted to help out the EU. Remember the days when UK energy security was put forward as gospel? And the even more recent, like this year, “stranded assets”? There are some supposedly intelligent people who do talk an awful lot of twaddle, with those that “enjoy” the consequences paying their salaries, and not even receiving an apology.
Reality has a habit of costing people a lot of money, doesn’t it? Perhaps when the additional nonsense of high wheat prices hitting people’s cost of living is realised, (seen the price of eggs?) then it will be reserved for feeding people and animals and not plonked into petrol tanks and reducing fuel efficiency at the same time? Back many years, the Egyptians were subject to the importance of grain storage and use. How the world has “advanced” that they are now returned to the same situation?! (Another “great” idea without thought around the consequences, where the consumer ends up paying more, twice over, with “scientists” after the event then finding the carbon footprint was no better than fossil fuel production! And importing countries now facing famines.)
And, still no apology.