GlassPoint Solar, a leading supplier of solar power to the oil and gas industry, has celebrated the successful completion of one million man-hours without a lost time injury (LTI) on the Miraah solar plant that it is building for Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) in the south of  Oman.

Miraah, a 1,021-MW solar thermal project, will be one of the world’s largest solar plants, delivering over one gigawatt of peak thermal energy.

This achievement is a result of GlassPoint’s unrelenting commitment to safety and the adoption of rigorous oil and gas industry best practices, the company said. It is also a reflection of the excellent performance of employees across the company and its contractors, it added.

“On behalf of GlassPoint, I would like to thank everyone involved in this ground-breaking project for their commitment to reaching this important safety milestone. Safety is at the heart of GlassPoint and all its operations around the world. Our  solar thermal technology was designed from the ground up to minimise risks at each stage of construction. One million hours with zero LTIs is a significant achievement as Miraah advances towards the generation of first steam this year,” said Ben Bierman, chief operating officer of GlassPoint.

He added: “In planning Miraah, we applied both GlassPoint’s own rigorous standards, as well as those demanded by PDO. With that, we developed innovative solutions to safeguard the health and safety of our workforce, especially in challenging desert conditions. Careful engineering, for example, reduces overhead lifting and component fabrication is completed without mechanical aids and with no hazardous or flammable liquids. Additionally, much of the solar collectors are assembled and installed at night, where we’ve established a mobile factory on site within the greenhouse structure, to mitigate the effects of extreme temperatures on the construction crew.”

The Miraah project will be one of the world’s largest solar plants, delivering over one gigawatt of peak thermal energy. Once complete, the facility will generate 6,000 tonnes of solar steam per day, delivering a significant portion of the steam requirements at PDO’s Amal oilfield.

Once complete, the Miraah project will deliver the largest peak energy output of any solar plant in the world. The scale of this landmark project underscores the massive market for deploying solar in the oil and gas industry, the company said.

The 1 GW project will reduce the amount of natural gas used to generate steam for thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In thermal EOR, steam is injected into an oil reservoir to heat the oil, making it easier to pump to the surface. Miraah will generate an average of 6,000 tons of solar steam each day, providing a substantial portion of the steam required at the Amal oilfield operated by PDO.

The mega project dwarfs all previous solar EOR installations and is more than 100 times larger than the pilot project built by GlassPoint for PDO in 2012.