What is happening

Horisont Energi’s Barents Blue ammonia project gets new partners

Norwegian energy firms Horisont Energi, Equinor and Vår Energi have signed a cooperation agreement for the development of Barents Blue, Europe’s first largescale blue ammonia production facility. The Barents Blue project is based on using natural gas from the Barents Sea to produce ammonia. It promises to provide Europe’s first large-scale clean ammonia production, located in Finnmark in Northern Norway.

Once operational, the facility will have a production capacity of 3000 tonnes of ammonia per day. During the production process, the project will capture carbon and permanently store it in the Polaris reservoir. Horisont Energi has now teamed up with the two largest offshore oil and gas producers in the Barents Sea region. Equinor and Vår Energi will be among the natural gas suppliers to the Barents Blue ammonia plant.

Chinese oil and gas company CNOOC has launched the country’s first offshore carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the South China Sea, Reuters reports. The plan is for the project to store more than 1.46 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The CCS facilities will be located at the CNOOC’s Enping 15-1 oilfield in the Pearl River Mouth Basin of the South China Sea. To be precise, the location is about 190 kilometres southeast of Hong Kong. The project is designed to reinject as much as 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year into seabed reservoirs.

China’s first offshore carbon capture project launched Dynamic cable ready to connect floating to fixed wind turbine

Orient Cable (NBO) has completed works on the dynamic subsea cable at China’s Yangxi Shapa III offshore wind project that will connect a floating wind turbine to a fixed unit for the first time.

Commissioning tests of what is said to be the world’s first anti-typhoon floating wind turbine were completed on early September, representing the end of offshore work and that the unit is ready to connect to the 400 MW project. According to NBO, due to the extreme weather conditions in the South China Sea, the dynamic cable is necessary to meet the requirements operating under even 17-class typhoon conditions. This set a lot of challenges in terms of the whole engineering work, including tensile, anti-bending, anti-fatigue, as well as adopting distributed buoyancy and ballast to keep the configuration in shallow water, the company added.

‘‘We see this project as a typical case by working closely with the stakeholders engaged from the very beginning, to clear up challenges in different scenarios and interfaces and select the best solutions for this project. A long-standing partnership, as a driver and commitment of NBO, does help to make a great success,’’ said Zhou Zewei, chief engineer at NBO.

Seaway 7 selects Port of Blyth as Seagreen cable base

Seaway 7 has selected the Port of Blyth as the location for the storage and mobilisation of the inter-array cables for the 1,075 MW Seagreen 1 wind farm offshore Scotland.

The Northumberland-based port has already started to receive cable into quayside storage tanks, designed and built by their in-house technical team. In total, approximately 12,000 tonnes of inter-array cables will pass through the Port’s Battleship Wharf Terminal, prior to installation offshore across 2022.

In addition, the Seagreen contract will provide a boost to training and education around the Blyth Estuary, providing “real world” experience to students of STEM subjects, from primary school to apprenticeship level, gaining inspiration from offshore energy related activity, the Port has said. In particular, the Port’s Offshore Renewable & Subsea Engineering Level 3 Diploma, designed via a partnership between Newcastle College and the Port’s own training arm Port Training Services, is aiming to develop the next generation of offshore focussed engineers and technicians.

The Seagreen 1 offshore wind farm project is located 27 kilometres off the coast of Angus in the North Sea firth.

NED-Project introduces hydrogen-ready offshore wind installation vessel

NED-Project, a Poland-headquartered naval architecture and ship design company with an office in the US, has developed a new wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV), which features a hydrogen-ready set-up and has the capability to install 15-20 MW wind turbines as well as to load and transport monopiles vertically.

The vessel design, NP20000X ULAM, which is intended to be Jones Act-compliant, has been awarded Approval in Principle (AIP) by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).

The design is hydrogen-ready with the engine rooms able to be converted into fuel cell compartments accommodating polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, making it possible to rely solely on liquefied hydrogen (LH2) to meet its energy demands. The vessel features an 8,000 square-metre deck on which monopiles could be loaded vertically, eliminating the need to rotate them to the vertical position at sea. The NP20000X ULAM design also incorporates a leg-encircling heavy cargo crane with a working load of 3,500 tonnes capable of handling turbines of 240-metre rotor diameter and 150-metre tower height. NED-Project Inc. is working with GPZ Energy to develop ULAM WTIV projects for the US market.

The first Jones Act-compliant WTIV set to serve the US market is Dominion Energy’s Charybdis, also being built to ABS Class. The vessel is expected to be sea-ready by late 2023 and will first be deployed out of New London harbor in Connecticut to support the construction of Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, both under joint development by Ørsted and Eversource.

New study: newbuilds reduce CO2 emissions by a third compared to conversion

A newbuild, dual-fuel gas carrier vessel generates lower CO2 emissions over the course of its operational life than an existing gas carrier converted to dual-fuel operations, a new study finds. The study, published by classification society ABS, used data based on vessels in the Avance Gas Holding Ltd. (AGH) fleet.

ABS compared potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between a newbuild, dual-fuel very large gas carrier (VLGC) and conversion of two AGH VLGCs over 20- and 25-year life cycles, including decommissioning. The findings suggest conversion increases emission intensity by between 13.7 and 32.6 percent over new construction.

“Decarbonization pathways are highly complex and challenging to evaluate how to produce the best strategy for reducing the GHG footprint over the lifetime of assets,” Georgios Plevrakis, ABS Director, Global Sustainability, said.

Large-scale deployment of CCS tech gets industry support in Houston

U.S. energy majors ExxonMobil and Chevron together with nine other partners will bring their collective and diverse industry expertise in support of a large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the Houston area. These collective efforts could capture and store approximately 50 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030.

Eleven companies have expressed interest in supporting the large-scale deployment of CCS technology in Houston. Calpine, Chevron, Dow, ExxonMobil, INEOS, Linde, LyondellBasell, Marathon Petroleum, NRG Energy, Phillips 66 and Valero have agreed to begin discussing plans that could lead to capturing and safely storing up to 50 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030 and about 100 million metric tons by 2040, ExxonMobil revealed in a statement on Thursday.

The companies plan to help address industrial CO2 emissions in one of the largest concentrated sources in the United States. Collectively, the 11 companies are considering using CCS technology at facilities that generate electricity and manufacture products that society uses every day, such as plastics, motor fuels, and packaging.

If CCS technology is fully implemented at the Houston-area facilities these 11 companies operate, nearly 75 million metric tons of CO2 could be captured and stored per year by 2040. There are ongoing discussions with other companies that have industrial operations in the area to add even more CO2 capture capacity. They could announce their support at a later date and add further momentum toward the city of Houston’s ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2050.

BP, NYK Line to work together to decarbonise shipping, other sectors

British oil and gas company BP and Japanese shipping major NYK Line have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on future fuels and transportation solutions to help industrial sectors, including shipping, decarbonise.

For shipping, the companies will collaborate and identify opportunities to help transition from current marine fuels to alternatives such as LNG, biofuels, and methanol, and to develop future fuels such as ammonia and hydrogen. “Getting this journey right will be critical to enabling the shipping industry to meet its long-term decarbonisation ambitions,” according to the duo.

For other hard-to-abate industrial sectors, the two partners will also consider potential marine transportation and other solutions for carbon dioxide, and explore participation in the supply chains for ammonia and hydrogen to be used in heavy industry and power generation, to help those sectors decarbonise.

Joined forces on modular IMO 2050 CII-ready LNG carrier

Classification society ABS, shipbuilder Hudong–Zhonghua Shipbuilding (HZS) and technology company Wärtsilä have partnered up to develop “a flexible, future-ready and modular” concept for a future multi-fuel electric liquefied natural gas carrier (LNGC).

Using advanced multi-physics modeling and simulation, the joint development project (JDP) will apply various decarbonization technologies and solutions to the vessel design and operation models to investigate its performance against the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO’s) Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) up to at least 2050.

Specifically, the entire vessel design will be optimized around a compact, electrified, integrated and efficient propulsion power solution that will deliver a significant CO2 reduction immediately and be ready to efficiently integrate new technologies in the future in order to stay ahead of the requirements of CII, supporting the industry’s ambitious towards zero-emission shipping.

The project will unite specialists from the ABS Global Simulation Center and Global Sustainability Center in Singapore, Houston and Athens with HZS’ R&D team and Wärtsilä’s Integrated Systems and Solutions experts.

Shipowners are currently faced with unprecedented challenges and uncertainties as they attempt to plan their fleets in order to meet the IMO’s Carbon Intensity Index (CII) carbon reduction trajectory of -70 percent by 2050. What is certain today is that owners must plan now to safeguard a future-proof newbuild vessel design. By installing and optimizing the vessel design around a compact, electrified and hybridized propulsion system, owners can obtain today a highly optimized and flexible asset that maintains high efficiency across a broad range of vessel speeds and power nodes – making it highly suitable to accommodate needed vessel speed and voyage optimizations in the future, according to the project partners.

“The modular and hybridized nature of this smart propulsion system provides the correct foundation for the introduction of new and potentially highly intermittent low-carbon energy sources and propulsion energy-saving devices both in the newbuild phase and also later as potential retrofit solutions,” Stefan Nysjö, Vice President, Power Supply, Wärtsilä Marine Power, concluded.

Industry majors, oil & gas players shortlisted for French floating wind tender

Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies – oil and gas players that continue raising their stakes in the renewable energy sector – have been selected by the French government to participate in the country’s first tender dedicated to floating wind.

Shell has qualified for the tender in a consortium with Valeco (a subsidiary of EnBW) and Eolien en Mer Participations (a subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations), while TotalEnergies has teamed up with Green Investment Group (GIG) and Qair.

Equinor, the developer of the world’s first floating wind farm which is now also building the world’s first floating wind project to electrify oil and gas platforms, has been selected to compete in the tender as a sole entity.

The tender will also see several offshore wind industry majors taking part, including the consortium between Elicio and BayWa r.e., Iberdrola, RWE, Ocean Winds, a consortium between wpd, Vattenfall and BlueFloat Energy, and a consortium formed by EDF Renewables and Maple Power – most of which are also currently competing to build floating wind projects in Scotland.

SEA-KIT USV first to demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell technology

SEA-KIT International has secured funding to install a hydrogen fuel cell on its 12-metre unmanned surface vehicle (USV) Maxlimer, representing an industry first. The project, funded by the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) working with InnovateUK, will showcase a diesel to hydrogen conversion of SEA-KIT’s USV design.

Bramble Energy will design and manufacture a marinized, customised version of its printed circuit board fuel cell (PCBFC), which will sit inside an enclosure within the USV to prevent seawater ingress and corrosion. Data gathered from bench testing and sea trials of Maxlimer will be used for the design and build of similar USVs, as well as for larger uncrewed vessel builds in the near future. This application of a hydrogen fuel source to a USV will be a world first, SEA-KIT said. “SEA-KIT USVs have a dual diesel-electric hybrid drive, with propulsion coming from an electric motor powered by battery banks that are charged by in-situ diesel generators,” said Ben Simpson, SEA-KIT CEO. “This project will replace one of the diesel generators with new hydrogen fuel cell technology from Bramble Energy and demonstrate an offshore operation with zero carbon emissions.”

Photo: Rich Edwards, ENP Media

SBM Offshore closes largest project financing in its history

FPSO operator SBM Offshore has completed the project financing of FPSO Sepetiba for a total of $1.6 billion, which is the largest project financing in the company’s history.

The project financing was secured by a consortium of 13 international banks with insurance cover from Export Credit Agencies (ECA): Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) and SACE S.p., SBM said. A letter of intent was received from China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure), which intends to join this transaction by the end of the year and will replace a portion of the commercial banks’ commitments.

The facility is composed of four separate tranches with a 4.3 per cent weighted average cost of debt, a fourteen-year post-completion maturity for the ECA covered tranches and a fifteen-year post-completion maturity on the uncovered tranches. Back in July 2020, SBM Offshore also closed a $600 million bridge loan facility for the financing of the construction of FPSO Sepetiba. According to previous information, the FPSO is expected to be delivered in 2022.

FPSO Sepetiba is owned and operated by a special purpose company owned by affiliated companies of SBM Offshore (64.5 per cent) and its partners (35.5 per cent). The vessel has a processing capacity of up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day, a water injection capacity of 250,000 barrels per day, an associated gas treatment capacity of 12 million standard cubic meters per day, and a minimum storage capacity of 1.4 million barrels of crude oil. The FPSO will be spread moored in approximately 2,000 meters of water depth.

FPSO Sepetiba will be deployed at the Mero field in the Santos Basin offshore Brazil, 180 kilometres offshore Rio de Janeiro. The Libra block, where the Mero field is located, is under Production Sharing Agreement to a Consortium comprised of Petrobras, as the operator, with 40 per cent, Shell with 20 per cent, TotalEnergies with 20 per cent, CNODC with 10 per cent and CNOOC Limited with 10 per cent interest. The consortium also has the participation of the state-owned company Pré-Sal Petróleo SA (PPSA), as manager of the Production Sharing Contract.

ORE Catapult, HonuWorx to boost use of subsea robotics in offshore wind

Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and HonuWorx are set to demonstrate a concept for a submersible mothership to be used at offshore wind farms. The project, funded by Innovate UK, will develop Ridley, a submersible platform that can transport large robots and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to offshore sites and release them directly under the water.

The concept is expected to resolve the remaining barriers to the adoption of subsea robotics by the offshore wind industry in terms of cost, carbon footprint, battery life at sea and digital connectivity. “While ROVs exist for offshore wind farm inspections, they rarely achieve more than 50% of their annual utilisation as they rely upon large, crewed, diesel-powered vessels for transportation”, ORE Catapult said. “Largely due to the use of these vessels, a 21-day inspection mission may cost up to £1.5 million and emit more than 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide”.

America’s first large-scale offshore wind farm reaches financial close

Vineyard Wind, a joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), has reached financial close on its 800 MW offshore wind farm in Massachusetts - the first largescale offshore wind farm in the United States and the Americas region.

The developer has raised $ 2.3 billion of senior debt through nine international and U.S. banks to finance the construction of the project, which now enables Vineyard Wind to give the go-ahead to its contractors. At $ 2.3 billion, Vineyard Wind 1 represents one of the largest investments in a single renewable energy projects in the U.S. Vineyard Wind 1 is also the first commercial scale offshore wind farm in the U.S. to achieve financial close, which comes a few months after the project was approved by the government and received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final Clean Air Act Outer Continental Shelf air quality permit. Construction works will first start onshore in Barnstable, where the offshore wind farm will connect to the national grid on land. Onshore works are scheduled to begin this Fall.

Offshore work will commence in 2022 with the installation of foundations and cables, followed by wind turbines. The 800 MW project will feature next-generation GE Haliade-X wind turbines, to be installed by DEME Offshore’s U.S. arm. The monopiles and transition pieces, which will be delivered by Sif and Windar, will be installed by Heerema Marine Contractors.

Jan De Nul will install inter-array cables supplied by JDR, while the export cables will be delivered by Prysmian. The 800 MW Vineyard Wind 1 is scheduled to deliver its first power to the grid in 2023.

Jan De Nul uses biofuel for Hamburg dredging project

For the first time in Germany, Jan De Nul Group is using solely second-generation biofuel for maintenance dredging works in the Port of Hamburg. This fuel contains no petroleum, but processed vegetable waste oil as a raw material, entirely in line with the principles of a sustainable circular economy.

Jan De Nul Nassbaggerei und Wasserbau GmbH has been awarded an important contract for maintenance dredging works in the Port of Hamburg within the scope of a European award procedure.

Two suction hopper dredgers, Kaishuu and Alexander von Humboldt, will execute these dredging works between June and December 2021. Thanks to the use of biofuel during these works, emissions of particulate matter and sulphur compounds are also significantly reduced, as combustion is much more efficient than with conventional diesel fuel, said Jan De Nul.

“We have already used this sustainable biofuel for several of our vessels in the Benelux and the UK,” said Michel Deruyck, Head of the Energy Cell at Jan De Nul Group. “Decarbonisation is at the top of Jan De Nul’s agenda and is supported throughout the company, both commercially, operationally and technically. We always strive to go beyond what is imposed on us. We’re going for zero.”

Doeksen’s LNG ferry wins tech and design award

The first single fuel LNG ferry in the Netherlands, Willem Barentsz, has won the international ‘Shippax Technology and Design Award 2021’.

Dutch ferry operator Rederij Doeksen’s first LNG-powered ferry Willem Barentsz debuted back in July 2020. It is a BMT-designed 70-meter vessel featuring Rolls-Royce twin MTU gas engines. Doeksen claims this is the world’s first ships with single-fuel LNG engines that can drive a fixed propeller directly.

The ship received the Shippax award for technology and design accordingly. To illustrate, the jury paid its compliments: “Operating in the shallow Wadden Sea, a UNESCO World Heritage site, ecological sustainability is at the heart of the design of (…) Willem Barentsz. Powered by two 1,492 kilowatts MTU high-speed LNG engines driving Veth azimuthing thrusters, a 46 cubic metres LNG tank is located in each hull.”

GEA to support green ammonia in shipping industry

GEA, a Germany-based machinery and plant manufacturer and systems supplier, revealed plans to support the shipping industry in reducing emissions as a system supplier with in-house solutions, with ammonia being one of the options.

This means that shipping companies and shipping lines that rely on ammonia as an alternative to diesel and heavy fuel oil for marine engine fuels can now count on GEA’s support in developing appropriate technologies.

The announcement was made at the international “Ship Efficiency” conference in Hamburg on 27 and 28 September 2021. In developing appropriate concepts for the use of ammonia (NH2, GEA said it relies on its expertise in separator technology as well as refrigeration and heating technology using natural refrigerants such as CO2 and ammonia. To reduce harmful emissions, more and more ships will be powered by alternative fuels to heavy fuel oil and diesel in the future. Experts from classification society DNV predict that in around 30 years at the latest, around a quarter of all ships on the world’s oceans will be powered by ammonia – alongside diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, heavy fuel oil and biofuels.

Qair partners up with Bretagne Ocean Power

French independent renewable energy producer Qair has signed a partnership agreement with business accelerator for marine renewable energy Bretagne Ocean Power to jointly contribute to the deployment of floating offshore wind, renewable hydrogen and tidal stream energy in the French region of Brittany.

The newly established partnership goes in line with Qair’s ambition to add 5GW of renewable energy capacity to its portfolio in the next five years that could be achieved through its multi-local and multi-technology strategy by further developing onshore and offshore wind, solar, tidal energy and hydrogen, the company said. In this regard, Qair plans to promote the marine renewable energy know-how of the Brittany region by associating various such projects in the area as early as possible, while also connecting the clusters and organisations from the sector operating in the region. Qair also aims to deepen the link between the Brittany universities concerned with marine renewables research, as well as the environmental organisations with the general public in order to increase the involvement of the citizens in the energy transition of their region.

More specifically, through the partnership with Bretagne Ocean Power, Qair plans to pool associated expertise from industry, scientific, and local environmental associations for each stage of future floating wind projects to ensure their successful delivery, while also involving all stakeholders in the process. France has a potential of around 3.5GW of tidal power, with the Raz-Blanchard site alone able to possibly generate 3GW.

Kooiman Marine Group delivers set of two dredgers to Van Oord

Kooiman Marine Group delivered two custom designed and custom build Water Injection Dredgers (WID) ‘Maas’ and ‘Mersey’ to Van Oord. The hybrid vessels were developed by Kooiman Engineering in close cooperation with Van Oord. Two electrically driven pumps deliver water under high pressure, or with a lot of volume through the U-shaped water injection pipe located at the rear of the ship.

With this pipe, water is injected into the soil, releasing sediment which is flushed away by the current. Multiple injection methods are possible, giving the ship optimal usability. The ships measure (length and width including the water injection pipe) 43.07 x 12.40 meters with a depth 3.40 meters.

"The first sea trial with the 'Maas' was performed some time ago." says Maarten Kooiman, project manager of the shipyard. "The sea trials were intensive. The ship is equipped with many systems that reduce emissions and increase employability. We tested these extensively."

The ship has a battery-hybrid energy management. Maarten continues: "With the flexibility of 1 or 2 diesel generators, which meet the IMO Tier 3 and Stage V emission requirements, the on-board network is powered. In addition, heat from the exhaust gases is converted into electrical power which is fed back into the grid."

EU wants to demonstrate zero-emission ships by 2030

The partnership board of the Zero-Emission Waterborne Transport has adopted a strategy which will enable Europe to demonstrate deployable zero-emission maritime and inland ships by 2030.

Early September, the partnership board, governing the Co-Programmed Partnership on Zero-Emission Waterborne Transport in the framework of Horizon Europe, organised its first meeting.

During this meeting, it adopted the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, detailing the roadmap to achieve the objectives set. Specifically, the partnership aims at leading and accelerating the transformation of waterborne transport to eliminate all harmful environmental emissions - including greenhouse gas, air and water pollutants - through innovative technologies and operation.

By 2030, the objective is to develop and demonstrate deployable zero-emission solutions which are applicable for all main ship types and services, to enable the achievement of zero-emission waterborne transport by 2050.

China to receive 3 carbon-neutral LNG cargoes from Petronas

This agreement will mark Petronas’ first delivery of carbon-neutral LNG to China. The cargoes will come to Shenergy’s terminals in Shanghai between October 2021 and March 2022. Earlier, the Malaysian giant shipped its maiden carbon neutral LNG cargo to Japan.

The company said this elevates the 15-year partnership with Shenergy. The partnership now includes the supply of carbon-neutral LNG thus reflecting the commitment to offering decarbonised LNG solutions.

This delivery also aligns with China’s ambition of hitting peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. Shenergy is a major LNG buyer to Petronas since 2006, following the first supply deal with its subsidiary Shanghai LNG.

Petronas sustained its position as Shenergy’s preferred LNG solutions provider when both parties concluded another new 12-year term deal last year.

Vroon’s retrofitted ship achieves 22 pct fuel saving

A recent retrofit to optimize a container ship’s propeller blade design has brought performance and fuel efficiency gains that are measurable in real-world conditions.

Dutch ship operator and manager Vroon recently approached Swedish company Berg Propulsion to investigate the possibility of optimizing the propulsion system on its container vessel, MV Indian Express, fitted with a controllable pitch propeller originally manufactured by Germany-based marine propulsion supplier ZF. “Efficiency gains are made for much of the time and, at 12 knots, the new blades achieve up to 50% higher efficiency than the ones they replace,” said David Sakandelidze, Berg Propulsion Business Manager – Energy and Efficiency.

The aim was to secure the sustainability benefits available through greater ship efficiency, as part of Vroon’s continuing strategy to find the best practical answers to lowering CO2 emissions, ahead of the IMO’s Energy Efficiency Ship Index (EEXI) and Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII).

Eni teams up with IRENA to speed up energy transition

Italian oil and gas company Eni has entered into a three-year partnership with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to collaborate in the promotion of renewable energy and accelerate the energy transition, particularly in countries that export fossil fuels.

The agreement has been signed by Eni’s Chief Executive Officer, Claudio Descalzi, and IRENA’s General Director, Francesco La Camera, at a time when Milan is hosting the “Pre-COP 26” preparatory ministerial meeting, Eni said. Under the agreement, Eni and IRENA will work together on accelerating energy transition and renewable energy development in fossil fuel exporting countries, as well as to identify barriers to private sector investment in renewable energy in countries where Eni operates and promote solutions in coordination with governments.

Specifically, Eni and IRENA will promote the integration of the African continent into the biofuel value chain through institutional capacity building, agribusiness and industrial development initiatives aimed at the production of advanced biofuels, helping the decarbonisation of the transport sector and promoting development opportunities.