Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) started-up its 100MW Amin IPP solar plant this week. The state-led firm says Amin is “one of the world’s first utility scale solar projects to have an oil and gas company as the sole buyer of electricity.”

The $94mn project will save Oman a modest 95.5mn m³/year (9.2mn cfd) of gas, but is part of a larger strategy to reduce oil field gas use. Power generation at oil and gas fields utilizes around 3.3bcm of gas annually, just over 10% of Oman’s total domestic consumption (46.2bcm in 2019). A record 14.55bcm (10.7mn tons) of this total ‘domestic’ consumption was liquified and exported by Oman LNG last year. (CONTINUED - 382 WORDS)