This week's summary of completed and newly awarded offshore projects turns the focus on offshore wind, highlighting the pace of continuing development in this segment of the offshore market in Europe and the US East Coast. Interestingly, we see that European subsea survey specialists have also been hard at work as evidenced by new awards and finished projects in the Middle East, North America, the Caribbean, and even close to home.
Vineyard Wind selects DEME Offshore for wind turbine installation
Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between US-based Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), has selected DEME Offshore US to serve as its contractor for the offshore transport and installation of the wind turbine generators for its Vineyard Wind 1 project, the first large-scale offshore wind installation in the United States.
DEME Offshore US will partner with local vessel operator Foss Maritime for the project. Foss will provide Jones Act-compliant feeder vessels to transport the turbines to the Port of New Bedford in Massachusetts, where they will then be loaded onto a DEME jackup installation vessel.
Vineyard Wind 1 is located 24 kilometres off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and will have a generating capacity of 800 MW to provide electricity to power up to 400,000 homes. It is scheduled to become operational in 2023.
Prysmian Group, RWE ink installation contract for Sofia wind farm off UK
Italy's Prysmian Group and German multinational energy company RWE have entered into an agreement for the development of a turn-key high voltage submarine and land export cable connection worth over €200 million for the 1.4GW Sofia Offshore Wind Farm project 195 kilometres off the north east coast of the UK.
Prysmian, which was selected as a preferred bidder in November 2020, will be responsible for the design, supply, installation, and commissioning of an HVDC symmetrical monopole cable system that will connect Sofia's offshore converter station with the onshore converter station in Teesside. The project involves more than 440 kilometres of ±320kV submarine export cables with XLPE insulation, and 15 kilometres of ±320kV land cables with P-Laser insulation.
The offshore cable operations will be performed using Leonardo da Vinci, Prysmian's new cable laying vessel, beginning in late 2026.
Van Oord bags Sofia wind farm EPCI gig
Van Oord has also been selected for work on the Sofia wind farm after the company received an award from RWE for the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation (EPCI) of the monopile foundations and array cables at the same site.
Through its UK branch MPI Offshore, Van Oord will create a logistics hub to deliver the comprehensive scope of work.
The offshore installation vessel Aeolus will be deployed to install the 100 extended monopile foundations without transition pieces. The 350 kilometres of array cables will be installed by cable-laying vessel Nexus.
Van Oord will sub-contract the fabrication of the foundations and array cables.
CWind wraps up cable pull-in and termination and testing at Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm
CWind has completed its cable pull-in and termination and testing campaign at Vattenfall's Danish Kriegers Flak Offshore Wind Farm.
CWind's scope of work included utilising two walk to work vessels, Island Diligence and Island Crown, which were mobilised to support the company's technicians conducting 72 inter-array cable pull-ins and termination and testing works. CWind also provided crewboats for the project.
Fugro completes geotechnical investigation for world's longest immersed tunnel
Fugro has completed a nearshore geotechnical investigation for the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel, a new immersed tunnel that will connect Denmark and Germany by road and rail.
The client was Femern Link Contractors, the consortium building the 18-kilometre tunnel that is the longest tunnel of its kind in the world and that will reduce travel time between the two countries.
Fugro has been involved in the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel project for the last 10 years, from early site investigation work up to the current geotechnical study. This latest phase included geotechnical site characterisation of the sub-seabed soil at both tunnel entrances and, on the Danish side, the production facility where the hollow concrete tunnel elements are being made.
The company deployed the jackup platform Skate 3, a custom-designed geotechnical spread, and a specialist data acquisition team to perform core drilling and downhole cone penetration tests. The resulting data were then analysed to determine subsurface uncertainty to reduce the contractor's and client's ground risk exposure by providing secured geotechnical design input parameters.
CGG secures BP surveys in Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago
CGG has been awarded three major seismic imaging projects by BP — two from the deepwater Gulf of Mexico and one from offshore Trinidad and Tobago.
These projects will start in the second quarter of 2021 and will be completed with cloud delivery of the data no later than Q4 2021.
PGS awarded 3D survey offshore Egypt
Norwegian survey specialist PGS has been awarded a high-fidelity 3D exploration program offshore Egypt on behalf of an oil and gas company.
The survey will be acquired using an extended long offset (ELO) configuration with Ramform Tethys towing a wide multi-sensor spread with an additional source vessel located several kilometres ahead. This will enable efficient recording of offsets up to 16 kilometres critical for imaging deeper complex exploration targets.
The source vessel will be towing a specially designed low frequency source.
The innovative ELO survey design combines optimal spatial sampling for better subsurface imaging together with long offset acquisition for accurate velocity model building.
