Southern North Sea News

Bibby Marine has secured a three-year contract extension with long-standing client TotalEnergies EP Nederland for its ‘walk-to-work’ service operation vessel (SOV) Bibby WaveMaster 1.The three-year charter extension will begin in the first quarter of 2025, and the vessel will be deployed on the Dutch continental shelf in the Southern North Sea.The SOV will continue to accommodate and transport service engineers and maintenance personnel, supporting gas production activities across…

This week Esgian’s Week 50 Rig Analytics Market Roundup notes developments in the semisub sector including that Shell has decided to exercise its option on Stena Don in the North Sea but not on Deepsea Bollsta in Namibia. Meanwhile, a new contract for the Transocean Barents will see it operate in the Black Sea, and jackup Shelf Drilling Perseverance will move to Vietnam.ContractsShelf Drilling has secured a contract award for the 400ft Shelf Drilling Perseverance jackup rig with PetroVietnam Domestic Exploration Production Operating Company Limited (PVEP POC).

Esgian has published its Week 49 Rig Market Roundup highlighting new drilling activity in the North Sea and a new licensing deal in Morocco.Drilling Activity and DiscoveriesSerica Energy is continuing with plans for its four-well drilling campaign in the UK North Sea, scheduled for 2024 and early 2025. The campaign will be carried out using the semisubmersible COSLInnovator. All four wells are production wells. The first well in the campaign will be a sidetrack of an existing well (B1z) on the Bittern field.

A new labor forecasting tool (LFT) is predicting around 16,000 additional workers could be needed in the UK’s offshore wind industry by 2030, and 12,000 extra workers will be needed specifically for carbon capture and hydrogen projects by 2027. It also highlights a significant increase in demand for workers in the West of Shetland oil and gas basin.The new resource, the first of its kind to focus on the engineering construction industry (ECI), provides insights into workforce numbers across regions and sectors…

Wagenborg Offshore has taken delivery of the Kingsborg subsea support vessel.Kingsborg is a subsea support vessel, converted from a platform supply vessel, that will support subsea activities and decommissioning works in the southern North Sea in a long-term agreement with an energy major, Wagenborg said, without sharing the name of the client."After the positive experiences with the W2W vessels Kasteelborg and Keizersborg, Wagenborg has once again opted to convert a standard Platform Supply Vessel into this specialist offshore vessel.

Renewable energy developer Vattenfall has selected the port at Great Yarmouth, run by infrastructure specialists Peel Ports, as the preferred location for the operations and maintenance base for the Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone.When completed, Vattenfall’s Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone will be able to power around 4.6 million households.According to Peel Ports around 130 new jobs would be created with staff directly employed for the lifetime of the project which is around 35 years.

Offshore vessel operator Wagenborg Offshore said Tuesday it had secured a long-term deal with an unnamed energy major for the deployment of a multi-purpose offshore vessel.According to Wagenborg, the vessel will support subsea activities and decommissioning works in the Southern North Sea.Wagenborg said that an existing young PX121 platform supply vessel would be converted into a multipurpose offshore vessel within 34 weeks at the shipyard Royal Niestern Sander in Delfzijl."During this period…

A new yard hall provides the specialized builder and conversion yard of fishing vessels the chance to expand operations and perform high quality refits in optimal conditions. On the hall the new Damen Maaskant logo is displayed in giant lettering.“In these troubling times for North Sea fishery, I do hope that this new hall will enable Damen Maaskant to improve on providing excellent services to their clients and that it may open the way to attracting new clients in other maritime markets,” Damen Shipyards Group chairman Kommer Damen said in his speech at the hall opening on September 3.

Neptune Energy on Wednesday announced the award of a £10 million three-year vessel services contract to Sentinel Marine, to provide offshore support for its operated Cygnus gas field in the U.K. southern North Sea.The contract, awarded following a competitive tendering process, will see Sentinel Marine continue to deploy its multi role, emergency response and rescue (MRERR) vessel Cygnus Sentinel on the gas field. The vessel will also support an upcoming drilling campaign on the Cygnus field.

Dutch shipbuilder Damen said Thursday that the first of Damen's ground-breaking Fast Crew Supplier (FCS) 7011 class has completed its sea trials coast of Turkey and is now set to move to the Netherlands."The offshore energy market and prospective customers will soon be able to experience the comfort and capabilities of the 74-meter, 40 knots, 122-passenger, crew change vessel," the company said.Damen said that the FCS 7011, in combination with the latest Ampelmann walk-to-work system…

Dutch offshore survey specialist Fugro has secured a contract with RWE to carry out geophysical exploratory works at Five Estuaries offshore wind farm, the extension project of the existing 353MW Galloper wind farm.Works are expected to take place in the Southern North Sea from August to November 2021.Three dedicated vessels will map the characteristics of the seabed and bedrock to assess the conditions around the wind farm site and the potential cable locations. The seafloor…

For the next three months, three wind farm survey vessels will be busy in the Southern North Sea at the North Falls offshore wind farm site in the UK.North Falls, a proposed extension to the existing Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Farm, is located approximately 20 kilometres from the East Anglia coast on a site covering a total of 150 km2. North Falls is jointly owned by SSE Renewables and RWE Renewables.The surveys, being conducted by the Dutch marine survey contractor Fugro, will be integral to the project’s environmental impact assessment…

Wagenborg Offshore said it has taken its third walk-to-work (W2W) vessel into service. The converted Keizersborg is used as a standby vessel for inspection and maintenance of unmanned platforms in both Dutch and British waters of the southern North Sea.The DP2 Keizersborg was originally designed as a platform supply vessel (PSV) by Wärtsilä and built by Wuhu Shipyard in China. It was converted in 16 weeks by the Royal Niestern Sander shipyard and provided with an extra accommodation…

Dutch offshore self-elevating platform and services provider Jack-Up Barge BV believes innovative and cost-efficient solutions are needed now more than ever across the offshore oil and gas and renewables businesses.The current market faces challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic and low oil prices to wind farms that have spiraled in size from 2-3 MW turbines to 12 MW turbines in just a few years. It’s a constantly changing landscape, and the risk is that if the industry keeps doing things the same way, it’ll get the same results, says Jack-Up Barge.

After a tender procedure, Dutch shipyard Royal Niestern Sander and a joint-venture between Russia's Mercury Sakhalin and Pola have signed an agreement for the construction of the world’s first shallow draft ice-breaking walk to work vessel. After delivery in December 2021, Mercury Sakhalin will operate this vessel on the East Coast of Sakhalin, Russia for the offshore oil and gas industry.Acting as an intermediary between both parties, Wagenborg Offshore have contributed to the…

Heriot-Watt University researchers are to map out the UK’s best sites for carbon capture by studying the geology of depleted gas fields in the North Sea.The team led by Professor John Underhill will use data from industry regulator the Oil and Gas Authority's (OGA) National Data Repository (NDR), which was opened up to access for the first time in 2019.Professor John Underhill said: “The Southern North Sea faces three of some of the UK’s largest carbon emission areas: the industrial hubs of Teesside, Humberside and the Thames estuary.“It also has a number of depleted gas fields that could be re-purposed to store carbon.“We are going to systematically examine the geology of these sites and determine which critical factors allow carbon to be safely stored over long…

The UK-based High Speed Transfers (HST) has taken delivery of its fourth fast crew supplier (FCS) 2710, eighteen months after receiving its first, the HST 'Hudson'.HST received HST Hudson, in June 2018, which was followed by HST Sofia in March 2019 and HST Harri in October of the same year.The latest addition is named HST Euan and in mid-January 2020 she was loaded on to a heavy lift vessel at Damen Shipyards Antalya in Turkey bound for Rotterdam.The HST Euan replicates the features and layout of her sister ships. These include capacity for 26 passengers in safety and comfort and the ability to operate in wave heights of more than two meters.

UK based Independent Oil & Gas (IOG) has confirmed that the Maersk Resilient rig spudded the Harvey appraisal well on 6 August 2019.The North Sea firm said in a press release that as previously indicated, completion of the well is expected to take approximately two months in the success case.According to the development and production company focused on becoming a substantial UK gas producer, Harvey is centrally located within IOG’s asset portfolio in UK Southern North Sea Blocks 48/23c, 48/24a, and 48/24b, close to the Thames Pipeline export route.The primary objective of the well is to confirm gas volumes which management estimate at 85/129/199 BCF Prospective Resources in the Low/Best/High case…

The logistics and service provider to the offshore energy industry Peterson UK Limited has concluded a new long-term agreement with Associated British Ports Holdings (ABP) to establish a new operational and logistics base to the Port of Lowestoft.ABP, which owns and operates 21 ports in the United Kingdom, said that the new agreement will see Peterson operate a wide range of warehouse, cargo and logistic services from the port, including fuel bunkering to support the oil & gas and renewable energy sectors being supplied from their Lowestoft Supply Base.Paul Smith, Peterson Business Manager East of England, said: “We are delighted to establish a new operations base in the Port of Lowestoft.

Fluor Corporation announced that Stork, part of Fluor’s Diversified Services segment, was awarded a contract extension by Centrica Storage Limited to continue providing fabric maintenance and associated services for the company’s UK onshore and offshore oil and gas assets.Fluor booked the undisclosed contract value in the second quarter of 2019, said a release.“Stork is extremely pleased to deepen our long-term relationship with Centrica in the UK by providing services to extend the life and efficiency of its assets in the northeast of England,” said Taco de Haan, Stork’s president.“Stork’s multidisciplined team will provide a single…

Two installations from Spirit Energy’s ST-1 in the North Sea have arrived at the Dales Voe decommissioning facility in Shetland, Scotland, with works set to be carried out by partners Veolia and Peterson.The 45-metre high 1,300 tonne steel jacket and 1,200 tonne topsides structure arrived into Dales Voe in Lerwick.The structures will be dismantled and disposed of by partners Veolia and Peterson. Now at the end of their working life recovering these platforms is important to maximize the value of the materials and assets they contain, and further the sustainability of the offshore industry.With a recycling target of  97% the project includes recovery of approximately 2…

Norway will seek to open two areas for the construction of floating offshore wind parks, which combined could hold a turbine capacity of up to 3.5 gigawatts (GW), the Norwegian oil and energy ministry said.Norway has recently been seeking to develop wind power, both onshore and offshore. The first offshore area, which the ministry will propose before July, is called Utsira North and is situated in the North Sea.

Associated British Ports (ABP) said that its Port of Lowestoft welcomed the Platform Supply Vessel (PSV) the Skandi Captain this week on its maiden call to the port.The visit is the latest in ABP’s partnership with Peterson UK Limited, the major logistics and service provider to the offshore energy industry.The Skandi Captain is the 50th additional call to Lowestoft since the Peterson agreement which was signed in January 2019, bringing vessel visits into the inner harbour on an almost daily basis and the number of additional calls is expected to grow even further.ABP’s ongoing investment in its infrastructure, coupled with the Port of Lowestoft’s key location…