Work Boat World Offshore Projects Roundup – May 14, 2021

The latest string of recently awarded and ongoing projects in the offshore sector covers mostly activities in support of wind farm installation. For the moment, the activity is concentrated in Europe and in the Far East.

Meanwhile, in the oil and gas segment, new projects are in the pipeline offshore Australia and Brazil.

DEME’s SDI awarded EPCI contract for Leucate offshore wind farm

Transmission system operator Réseau de Transport d’Électricité (RTE) has awarded a consortium formed DEME’s French subsidiary SDI and JDR Cables an EPCI contract covering the export cable that will connect the Leucate floating offshore wind farm to the existing power grid.

Once completed, the Leucate project will be one of the largest offshore floating wind farms in France with a total generating capacity of 30 MW. The farm itself is currently being developed by Les Eoliennes Flottantes du Golfe du Lion (EFGL), a consortium comprising Ocean Winds and Caisse de Dépôts, and is located 16 kilometres off the South East coast of France in the Mediterranean Sea.

The export cable will include a submarine cable and an onshore cable section, connecting into the onshore substation near Le Barcarès. Construction activities are set to start in 2022.

Van Oord begins installation work on Saint-Brieuc wind farm offshore Brittany

Van Oord’s installation vessel Aeolus has begun installing the first of 62 jacket foundations for the Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm project.

The wind farm is located 16.3 kilometres off the coast of Brittany and will have a total capacity of 496 MW once online.

Van Oord is responsible for the transport and installation of 62 jacket foundations for the wind turbines (three pin piles each) and the four foundation pin piles for the offshore substation. A total of 190 pin piles will be installed.

Van Oord said that, due to the geotechnical circumstances in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, harsh weather conditions combined with extremely strong currents, heavy Atlantic swell and very high waves, offshore operations are possible only between March and October.

The installation campaign for the pin piles will be executed in 2021 and 2022. In 2022, the jackets will also be installed.

Seajacks jackup starts foundation installation on Akita, Noshiro wind farms

Seajacks International’s jackup installation vessel Seajacks Zaratan has begun installing the foundations at the Akita and Noshiro offshore wind farms off Japan’s Akita prefecture.

Once completed, the facilities will have a combined capacity of 139 MW, making it one of the first large-scale commercial wind farm projects in Japan.

The work is being carried out by a Japanese subsidiary of Seajacks and Kajima Corporation on behalf of Akita Offshore Wind Corporation.

MMA wraps up UXO surveys off Taiwan

MMA Offshore recently completed a survey work scope for the Formosa 2 offshore wind farm Project located off the coast of Taiwan.

The project is located between seven and 18 kilometres off Miaoli County and will have an installed capacity of 376 MW.

The DP2 support vessel MMA Prestige was utilised on several potential unexploded ordnance (UXO) target investigations and also ran 168 kilometres of magnetometer survey lines.

TechnipFMC gets green light for work offshore Australia, secures Brazil contract

TechnipFMC has received a notice to proceed with a subsea production system contract on behalf of Santos.

The work will be in support of the Barossa gas project, located 300 kilometres north of Darwin, Australia, at a water depth of approximately 130 metres. The contract scope covers the supply of subsea trees and associated control systems, manifolds and wellheads, as well as installation and commissioning support, which will help to extend the life of the existing Darwin LNG facility.

Meanwhile, TechnipFMC has been awarded a contract by Petrobras for work at the Marlim and Voador oil and gas fields.

TechnipFMC will supply up to eight manifolds for production and injection. The contract also includes associated tools, spares and services.

For the works, the company will utilise an all-electric robotic valve controller, a unique technology that replaces traditional subsea hydraulics, as well as thousands of mechanical parts, while providing real-time data and analysis on system performance.