Spreading the High-Spec Joy

This week at MarineLink…

A noteworthy vessel was introduced to the fixed-bottom offshore wind sector this week. The offshore installation vessel Boreas was delivered to Van Oord by Yantai CIMC Raffles Offshore in China. The vessel will be the largest of its kind once operational, and it is purpose-built for the transport and installation of foundations and turbines up to 20MW capacity turbines.

China’s Dongfang Electric is already building 26MW turbines, part of an on-going upsizing of projects that is driving up the size of these specialized, high-spec vessels.

Also this week, DeepOcean signed a charter contract for the high-spec subsea vessel Orient Adventurer. DeepOcean will employ the vessel globally for offshore wind maintenance and installation as well as high-end inspection, maintenance and repair, construction, and recycling of offshore oil and gas infrastructure.

Multi-purpose vessels such as the Orient Adventurer can work on both fixed wind and oil and gas projects.

However, the transfer of vessels to floating wind is not always going to be easy, reports Philip Lewis, Research Director, Intelatus Global Partners, in the December 2024 issue of Maritime Reporter magazine.

Global commissioned floating wind capacity is forecast to reach around 6GW by 2030 and around 50GW by 2035, and Lewis says that there is insufficient technically capable vessel supply to meet this demand. “Are big, expensive floating wind specific vessels the answer? The quick answer is “no.” Unless charters agree long-term vessel utilization, there will likely be several months every year where a floating wind specific vessel will be underutilized. Long-term charters commitments will be needed to justify investment in high-cost assets. These conditions do not currently exist.

“There is a greater argument for large subsea vessel building, due to the flexibility of the assets to work in both oil and gas and offshore wind (bottom-fixed and floating) space. But the high-spec anchor handlers required by floating wind projects are a more difficult investment case. What most floating wind projects will require is generally technically very different from most oil and gas projects. As a result, a typical large oil and gas anchor handler will lack one or more of the key technical features to be an efficient tool for commercial floating wind projects.”