![COLUMN | Golden opportunities in the North Sea: platform supply vessels and the wind turbine market? [Offshore Accounts]](http://media.assettype.com/bairdmaritime%2F2026-05-25%2Flslimpk9%2FUntitled-May-13-2026-at-09.00.32.jpeg?w=480&auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=max)
Last week, we looked at the grand geopolitical significant of a Beijing blockbuster movie set as submarines played cat and mouse off the coast of China. This week, we return squarely to the offshore industry and consider the curious revival of the platform supply vessel (PSV) market in the North Sea. Our good friends at Clarkson Securities and Fearnleys Securities in Oslo have some deals for you!
And we dissect wind behemoth Cadeler, a company with the largest fleet of wind turbine installation vessels in the world, but no profits for the first quarter of the year.
It was a busy week in the offshore sale and purchase market, as spot day rates comfortably above US$20,000 per day, once again attracted Norwegian speculators into a market that was looking decidedly stressed only a few months ago when day rates were stuck at US$6,000 for a protracted period. Now investors are banking that the war in the Persian Gulf will lead to higher oil prices for longer, allowing them to wring value out of ships which would ordinarily be sold to second tier markets like India, Egypt or Nigeria.
Fearnley Securities managed to sell the 21-year-old, Norwegian-built PSV Strilmøy, to be renamed Atlantica Explorer, in a newly established financial project. No sale price was mentioned, though we would have estimated somewhere around US$8 to US$9 million for this 2005-built, DP2 914-square-metre clear deck vessel assuming scrapping at 25 years of age. Clearly a valuation of closer to US$20 million is more likely with a 30-year life of vessel estimated.
We noted in 2023 that Norwegian asset flipper and speculator Atlantica Shipping had been gathering a large portfolio of mature PSVs, most recently the similarly aged Skandi Caledonia and Skandi Barra in late 2023. Those purchases came to a grinding halt when the oil price corrected in 2024 and 2025.
Now, the Atlantica Explorer purchase brings the company's fleet to nine vessels, all North Sea-based. Seven of the nine vessels are twenty years of age or more. This is a bold gamble that the North Sea will continue to support vessels of an age that would make them unworkable for most oil majors elsewhere in the world.
Another Fearnley sponsored project for aged tonnage for Norwegian speculators was the sale of three PSVs owned by the Fletcher Group, being: FS Aquarius (2011-built) with 1,020 square metres of clear deck and is on a 15-month firm charter at a day rate of US$21,750 per day; FS Sceptre (2013-built) with 902 square metres of clear deck space and is on a six-month firm charter at €14,995 (US$17,443) per day; and FS Balmoral (2008-built) with 742 square metres clear deck and is on a 19-month firm charter at £12,500 (US$16,800) per day.
The three ships are believed to have sold for a combined price of an eye watering US$57.75 million, to vehicles controlled by Harald Moraeus-Hanssen, former boss of Fearnley Securities through his company Uthalden Maritime. The Fletcher Group will retain 25 per cent ownership and Uthalden Maritime Management will act as disponent owner. Uthalden, wholly owned by Mr. Harald Moræus-Hanssen, subscribed to a minimum of ten per cent of the equity in the project, which has been dubbed Caledonian Supply.
The combined equity in the vessels is US$33 million whilst Fearnleys arranged US$29 million of debt prices at SOFR+350 bps per annum.
No-one I have spoken to can understand the economics, which appear to rely on nearly 100 per cent utilisation of the ships, despite their age, at over US$20,000 per day, seemingly forever. Fearnleys makes some juicy fees, Fletcher gets to cash out, and Uthalden gets fees for a relatively small equity contribution of just over a million dollars a ship, but what is in it for the new investors coming in the project?
There was some blah blah in the Fearnleys spiel about accelerated debt repayment to derisk the project, but the valuation on the assets is sky high and requires everything to go well for a long time, which would be highly unusual in the world of offshore marine.
But it is not Uthalden’s first rodeo.
We last covered Mr Moraeus-Hanssen buying the 2003 built PSV Normand Flipper, which was quickly renamed HM Flipper on February 10, 2023, and transferred from the Norwegian to Bahamas flag in Aberdeen. After that, in August 2024, he bought the younger, 2007-built Bourbon Monsoon which was renamed MH Monsoon.
Investors initially took a bath, as the North Sea spot market tanked shortly thereafter and the ship was chartered back to Bourbon for a project on the other side of the Atlantic. But now the North Sea is back, and so is MH Monsoon, which was reflagged to Norway at the end of last year and is now working out of Yarmouth in the United Kingdom. Mr Moraeus-Hanssen also seems to have taken over the Fletcher managed FS Aries, a 2008-built PSV with 700 square metres of clear deck space, in late 2024.
There is a very clear reason for Fletcher wanting to sell these older ships as it has a newbuilding commitment for Hercules Supply, which will shortly take delivery of an 88 metres LOA, 1000 square metres clear deck space, battery-hybrid PSV from China’s Fujian Southeast Shipyard, built to a Breeze design. We understand that the ship has no work upon delivery, and faces an expensive mobilisation from China to the North Sea.
But for Mr Moraeus-Hanssen and his project backers to pay so much for such old vessels, truly they must believe that the North Sea has a golden future.
Whilst Fearnley Securities has been digging around amongst the oldest and least marketable PSVs in the North Sea to find speculators willing to take a punt on the end of life opportunities in vessels approaching or entering their third decade of life, Clarkson is seeking buyers for one of the youngest and highest specification fleets in the North Sea: Golden Energy Offshore of Norway.
Last week, a terse stock market announcement declared that Clear Ocean Partners (COP) and Pelagic Partners, the two largest shareholders of Golden Energy Offshore Services, had, “initiated a strategic review relating to their investment in the company. As part of the strategic review, COP and Pelagic will evaluate a broad range of options including potentially a sale of their shareholding in the company and/or other strategic transactions.”
Golden Energy survived a near death experience when the spot market plunged in 2025 and was shored up by additional shareholder equity raisings in December. It reported a loss of NOK195 million (US$21 million) for 2025.
Then, earlier this year, it achieved a coup by selling three of its modern Ulstein-designed PSVs to politically well-placed Turkish shipowners for charter to the state oil company of Turkey, TPAO. The company raised over US$85 million from the sale of the three ships, leaving it with just three modern PSVs in its owned fleet: Energy Pace (built in 2015), Energy Paradise (built in 2015) and Energy Duchess (built in 2019), plus the aged 1,000-square-metre clear deck Energy Swan (built in 2005). The trio of newer PSVs are amongst the youngest and most fuel economical ships plying the North Sea spot market.
Now, with the North Sea market in recovery, its biggest shareholders are doing the classic private equity move of rushing to cash out whilst they can.
However, as Golden Energy Offshore is a public listed company with just four owned vessels, it is hard to see how the shareholders can extract any additional value from their strategic process. Any buyer will have to make a general offer to buy the whole company and will need to take on the Norwegian employment liabilities associated with the Norwegian crew and Norwegian office staff.
By its own admission in its investor presentation, Golden Energy’s fleet value of is US$106 million, “based on two independent brokerage firms dated 30th and 31st of March 2026.” This includes a valuation of over US$20 million for Energy Swan.
Bear in mind that the company bought the two 2015-built PSVs from Vroon Offshore Services for just US$21 million each in the latter company’s botched 2023 asset disposal.
Now, the combined debt and market capitalisation of Golden Energy Offshore exceeds even that stretched fleet value. It has a market capitalisation of US$53 million as of Friday, US$46 million due in lease obligations on the three vessels, and an implied buyback of US$23 million after five years.
I struggle to see a huge upside for investors at the current share price. Maybe ten per cent?
But in a world where Norwegian speculators believe that 20-year-old PSVs priced at valuations not seen for over a decade somehow represent value, Golden Energy Offshore’s fleet at least has years of future earnings ahead of it, which is more than can be said for the PSVs owned by Atlantica and Uthalden.
We wish Golden Energy’s seafarers and staff well at what must be a stressful time for them during this strategic review by the controlling interests in the company.
For several years, we have tediously banged on that wind farm giant Cadeler has been historically over optimistic on its future costs, that its overhead is far too high compared to other jackup owning companies, and that it uses strange metrics to try to make its performance appear better than it actually is. All these features were on display in its recent results report for the period from January to March 2026.
The first quarter results for this year were (un)surprisingly bad, as the usual winter weather and typical seasonal slowdown in the northern hemisphere impacted on utilisation. As Cadeler’s own press release put it, “for the first three months of 2026, the group’s result was a loss of €7 million (US$8.1 million), a decrease of €9 million (US$10.4 million) relative to the €2 million (US$2.3 million) profit reported for the comparable period in 2025.”
Cadeler was operating ten wind turbine installation vessels (WTIVs) this year compared to seven in the prior year period, and reported that its fleet utilisation was just 48 per cent over the first three months of 2026, compared to 55 per cent in the first three months of 2025. Its return on assets was 0.2 per cent for the quarter.
Cadeler then explained that its “adjusted utilisation” was actually 78 per cent, informing investors that “adjusted utilisation… means adjusted for planned off-hire including drydock and transportation from shipyard.” I get that mobilising a unit from a shipyard in Asia to a client in Europe to start its first contract is an expense that can be capitalised and should probably not be included in utilisation figures.
But shipyard stays? Please. Does CEO Mikkel Gleerup think analysts were born yesterday? Half your fleet was off-hire for three months, and the extremely well paid management team should own it.
I did a quick search of all the major rig owners and offshore support vessel owners and not one attempts to pretend that shipyard stays, special surveys and planned drydocks are not off-hire periods that can be excluded from utilisation. Yes, laid-up vessels are often excluded from “marketed utilisation”, but this was not the case for Cadeler where all the fleet is operational.
With a fleet of ten vessels in service and a standard five-year docking cycle and crane recertification, one can naturally expect two WTIVs to require a special survey every year. Golden Energy even laid out its docking schedule to investors to highlight its expected lack of downtime. Maybe Cadeler could be as transparent?
None of the major rig owners currently reports BS numbers of “adjusted utilisation” that exclude planned maintenance time from utilisation, nor does Tidewater, Solstad or DOF. When an entire page of an investor presentation is taken to explaining “alternative performance measures,” shareholder and lenders should exercise caution.
To Cadeler’s credit, revenues were up 90 per cent in Q1 2026 compared to the Q1 2025, but, unfortunately, costs rose 120 per cent. We have highlighted previously that we feel that Cadeler’s costs are out of control (the Augustus Gloop problem in wind, as we called it) and that it is a top-heavy organisation with too many middle managers paid too much compared to any reasonable peer organisation.
As recently as the third quarter 2025 results, Cadeler’s CFO denied the company had a cost problem and boasted to analysts that, “cost of sales [is] under control, €38,000 (US$44,000) approximately for the quarter, a little bit up as compared to last year, but also two vessels in operations in the US with a little bit of higher operating expenses per day.”
At the time, I noted that in 2023, Cadeler had forecast that its WTIVs would cost €35,000 (US$40,000) per day to operate in 2026. So, what did the first quarter reveal? For the first three months of 2026, they actually cost €40,837 (US$47,377), more than 15 per cent higher than the forecasts shared by management when the company merged with Eneti.
You don’t need to be an investment analyst to see that €40,837 (US$47,377) is considerably higher than the €35,000 that the company forecast.
Cadeler’s shore and general and administrative costs rose another 20 per cent year on year from €16 million (US$19 million) to €19 million (US$22 million), and average headcount rose from 272 to 355 people. Yes, it takes Cadeler over 35 staff onshore to manage each of its WTIVs. No, we don’t know why, either.
The good news is that, as the WTIV fleet has expanded, the cost per vessel has fallen from 2024, when we had noted that, “the company operates just four WTIVs in service at an administrative cost of about US$35,000 per vessel per day.” Two years later, that had fallen to €21,111 (US$24,278). This is still above the equivalent cost base of drilling operators, but it does show some economies of scale finally materialising.
Don’t worry, though, as Cadeler intends to go head to head with the big and much more profitable low countries integrated players of Boskalis, DEME, Jan de Nul and Van Oord. In March, Cadeler raised €175 million (US$203 million) in a successful private placement, resulting in the issuance of approximately 35 million shares at a price of NOK56 per share and investment bank charges of around US$4 million.
The net proceeds are intended to partly finance two wind foundation installation vessel newbuilds to be delivered in mid-2030 and mid-2031 and the potential acquisition of a heavy-lift vessel for scour protection (rock installation) scopes.
Maybe Cadeler’s gamble will pay off, but every newbuild increases the company's debt higher. As the US wind market closes, more vessels will be competing with Cadeler’s in Northern Europe. In Asia, it has competition from local players who have their own newbuilds (Penta-Ocean, SHMZ and Hanwha Ocean) as well as many mainland Chinese contractors.
Cadeler is a bold bet on the future of the WTIV market, but unlike DEME and the other low countries players, who are diversified into dredging, offshore construction and civil works as well as the wind business, it is a pureplay.
All of Cadeler’s eggs are in one basket. The war in the Middle East makes offshore renewables look more attractive for many countries, but the economics remain challenging compared to solar in many countries.
Even if its debt exceeds US$2 billion with its newbuilds, the proposed trio of new WTIVs certainly start to make Cadeler look too big to fail, at least in the short term. But a sustained market downturn would be fatal, although it would probably force through some belated cost management at the Augustus Gloop of wind.
