Operating an offshore oil platform required a huge amount of energy in the form of electricity. For that purpose, gas turbines have been used. With recent attempts from many companies to reduce their carbon footprint, alternative methods to power offshore oil platforms had been suggested. Particularly, abundant resources of wind energy in the ocean lead to study of powering an offshore oil platform with the offshore wind turbines. The results concluded that the system is technically feasible to be implemented. This research aims to evaluate the economic feasibility of using wind turbines to power the offshore oil field operation especially evaluating “how much oil minimum volume is required for the project to be profitable." The project is evaluated by looking at Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Payback Period (PBP), and Profitability Index (PI). The revenue of the company from each period is calculated according to the gross split system currently used in the Indonesian oil and gas business. By setting up the values needed in oil and gas investment schemes, the volume of oil in a reservoir that will return a profit for the project can be calculated.
It is evaluated that the wind turbines installation to replace the gas turbines required less oil volume of 284 million bbls compared to the conventional offshore oil platform of 337 million bbls for the project to be economically reasonable. The addition of energy storage to make the system more reliable yield to minimum oil volume of 291 million bbls to be economically feasible. The sensitivity analysis shows that the split percentage between the government and the company affect NPV the most than other parameters such as oil price, CAPEX, and OPEX. The system could benefit the environment by preventing a total of 750 metric tons annually or 19 million metric tons during 25 years of the project lifetime.
