It’s been quite a few years for us at GlassPoint Solar. Together with our partners Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), two years ago we announced plans to build one of the world’s largest solar plants. On an oilfield in South Oman, the solar thermal project, called Miraah, will concentrate sunlight to produce steam. The steam will be used to extract heavy and viscous oil in a process called thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
Once complete, Miraah will be the first solar plant to exceed one gigawatt in peak thermal energy. The scope of this landmark project underscores the massive market for deploying solar in the oil and gas industry.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to produce heavy oil, which accounts for 70% of today’s remaining reserves. A typical heavy oilfield consumes about the same amount of energy as a small city. It’s this massive demand for thermal energy that will enable solar deployment at an unprecedented scale.
Miraah will provide a sustainable solution for EOR steam, which is currently produced by burning natural gas. Once complete, Miraah will save 5.6 trillion British Thermal Units (Btus) of natural gas each year, the amount of gas that could be used to provide residential electricity to 209,000 people in Oman.
The project will generate an average of 6,000 tons of solar steam daily, dwarfing all other solar EOR installations. The system will deliver steam to existing thermal EOR operations at PDO’s Amal field, meeting a sizable portion of its steam demand.
The full-scale project will comprise 36 glasshouse modules, built and commissioned in groups of four. Miraah broke ground in 2015, with steam generation from the first glasshouse module coming this year.
The project is expected to reduce CO emissions by over 300,000 tons annually, the equivalent of taking 63,000 cars off the road.
Miraah is just the beginning. GlassPoint’s efforts with PDO will pave the way for additional large-scale solar EOR developments at oilfields around the world. We are thrilled to embark on a new era of partnership between the oil and solar industries. Now it’s full steam ahead!