Perenco fined for excessive venting at North Sea terminal

April 30, 2024

Britain’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has issued its largest financial penalty to date for a venting breach.

Perenco operates infrastructure in the Humberside area via the Dimlington Terminal, and the company says it has the possibility to reuse existing key assets, such as strategic pipelines, to facilitate the project.

Offshore staff

ABERDEEN, UK — Britain’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has issued its largest financial penalty to date for a venting breach.

The Leman Field is connected to the PUK Bacton Terminal, which will receive and process CO2 offshore.

Perenco UK must pay £225,000 ($282,000) for venting 59 metric tons of gas for over a month without consent from its gas processing plant in Dimlington on the East Yorkshire coast in eastern England. The facility receives production from various gas fields in the southern North Sea, as does Perenco’s Bacton terminal in Norfolk.

The company had permission to vent 235 metric tons between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, but exceeded that limit on Nov. 6 and vented the extra gas until a new consent was issued on Dec. 14 that year.

According to the NSTA, Perenco had confirmed it had systems to track the daily volumes of gas it emitted. However, no internal mechanisms were in place to ensure that any risks identified through this system were acted on.

The main purpose of the financial penalty is deterrence, the NSTA said, as it seeks to eliminate unnecessary or wasteful flaring and venting of gas across the UK Continental Shelf.

The OGA Strategy, it added, includes a requirement for the industry to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from sources such as flaring and venting. The OGA Plan also requires operators to adopt various decarbonization measures including actions to support zero routine flaring and venting by 2030.

04.30.2024