Hungary and Qatar have signed a gas exportation deal

Hungary will start receiving shipments of liquified natural gas from Qatar beginning in 2027 in an agreement between the two countries announced mid-August.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Qatar, the world's biggest LNG exporter, currently has no more LNG available for export and the details of the agreement are yet to be determined, according to Reuters.

Szijjarto said at a news conference: "We have reached a political agreement, which is now followed by talks between energy companies Qatargas and Hungary's MVM to determine the quantity, pace and shipment route of the supplied gas to Hungary from 2027."

Hungary’s demand for LNG has surged along with the rest of Europe, propelled by sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia after it declared war on Ukraine in February 2022.

Natural gas makes up about a quarter of the EU’s overall energy consumption, with more than 15% of its gas needs imported through natural gas piped or shipped, according to the European Commission. Before the conflict with Ukraine, Russia supplied around 40% of all pipeline imports.

As the EU reduced its reliance on Russian gas, it increased its US imports. The United States became the EU’s top LNG supplier at 41% of its imports in all of 2022, according to data collected by commodity market solutions company Kpler.

Europe is also looking at Qatar, which reclaimed its position as the largest LNG exporter in 2022 with 80 million tons of LNG, according to the Gas Exporting Countries Forum report. According to ship-tracking data collected by Bloomberg, the Gulf state tied with the United States as the world’s top LNG exporter last year with 81.2 million tons.

Last November, Qatar signed a 15-year deal to supply Germany - Europe’s largest gas marketwith two million tons of LNG annually, reported Reuters. Deliveries will start in 2026.

Crucial Lessons For Developers

In late May, the second floating wind turbine from Pilot Offshore’s five-turbine Kincardine development off the east coast of Scotland arrived in port for maintenance. The KIN-02 turbine was delivered by JD Contractor’s AHTS Assister to the quayside at the port of Maasvlakte, Rotterdam. This was two weeks after PSV Coco and AHTS BB Ocean had disconnected the turbine from the wind farm site. I

The first floating wind turbine from the Kincardine wind farm, KIN-03, had also been disconnected and towed for repair in the summer of 2022. This marked the first incidence of a floating wind turbine requiring heavy maintenance (i.e. being disconnected and towed for repair) anywhere in the world. KIN-03 was also towed from Scotland to Maasvlakte.

With maintenance of the second turbine ongoing, we can take the opportunity to examine what lessons can be learned from the world’s first example of heavy maintenance of a floating wind turbine.

Kincardine Case Study: Installation vs Maintenance

Kincardine is the first commercial-scale floating wind farm in the UK sector and, as such, has been watched closely by the industry through each stage of its development. When one of the five floating Vestas V164-9.5 MW turbines, KIN-03, suffered technical failure last May, a major technical component needed to be replaced. The heavy maintenance strategy selected by the developer, Principle Power, and the offshore contractors (JDContractor and Buksér og Berging), consisted in disconnecting and towing the turbine and its floater to Rotterdam for maintenance, followed by a return tow and re-connection. All of the infrastructure, such as crane and tower access, remained at the quay following the construction phase.

A comparison of net vessel days for the maintenance and installation campaigns at this operation highlights the potential upsides of using a dedicated marine spread to allow for easy maintenance operations. Turbine reconnection during maintenance stands at 17.2 net vessel days, similar to the first hook-up operation performed during installation in 2021 (14.6 net vessel days). However, this exceeds the installation average of eight net vessel days per turbine. The new marine spread used during the heavy maintenance operation differed from the one used during installation, therefore it did not benefit from the learning curve and experience from the initial installation campaign.

A similar effect was encountered during the array cable re-connection part of the maintenance programme. It was performed by one AHTS which spent a total of 10 net vessel days on the operation. This compares to the installation campaign where the array cable second-end pull-in lasted a maximum of 23.7 hours using the cable layer Maersk Connector.

The full breakdown of the turbine shutdown duration was 14 days at the quay for maintenance, 52 days from turbine disconnection to turbine reconnection and 94 days from disconnection to the end of post-reconnection activities.

Key considerations for heavy maintenance in floating wind

Two main lessons emerged from the first heavy maintenance operation at Kincardine: the need to identify an appropriate O&M port and to ensure a secure fleet is available.

Identification of O&M port

A port requires sufficient room and a deep water quay in order to be suitable for O&M in floating offshore wind. It needs to be equipped with a heavy crane with sufficient tip height to accommodate large floaters and reach turbine elevation. Furthermore, the distance to the wind farm is a key element in reducing towing time to minimize transit and non-productive turbine time.

During the heavy maintenance period for KIN-03, the selected quay (which had also been utilized in the initial installation phase of the wind farm project) was already busy as a marshalling area for other projects (HKZ and

Dogger Bank A). This complicated the schedule significantly as the availability of the quay and its facilities had to be navigated alongside these other projects. This highlights the importance of abundant quay availability both for installation (long-term planning) and also for maintenance sometimes at short, unexpected notice.

Secure fleet

At the time of KIN-03’s maintenance (June 2022) the North Sea AHTS market was in an exceptional situation with the largest bollard pull AHTS units contracted at over $200k a day: the highest rate in over a decade. The spot market was nearly sold-out due to medium-term commitments alongside the demand for high bollard pull vessels for the installation phase at the Norwegian Hywind Tampen floating wind farm project. Hywind Tampen’s installation required the use of four (out of 41 trading in the North Sea market) AHTS above a 200t bollard pull.

Two crane concepts are especially relevant in this instance. The first method is for a crane to be included in the turbine nacelle to be able to directly lift the component which requires repair from the floater. This is what can currently be seen on onshore turbines.

The second method is self-elevating cranes. Several such solutions are already in development including Mammoet’s SK6,000 crane; WindSpider, which is supported by RWE; and Liftra ApS which is supported by DEME. The Mammoet solution, which is capable of lifting over 4,000t to a height of 175m with a maximum reach of 144m, allows developers more flexibility when utilizing onshore facilities as part of the installation and O&M programmes. Meanwhile, WindSpider is self-erecting and uses the tower of a wind turbine as part of the crane when performing installation, maintenance, re-powering, and decommissioning of wind turbines. Finally, Liftra is also self-erecting.

To sum up, the heavy maintenance of floating turbines at the Kincardine wind farm has provided valuable lessons for the industry. The requirement to disconnect and tow turbines for repair proved to be a complex and time-consuming process, highlighting the need for careful planning and consideration of alternative maintenance strategies, some of which are already in development.

The key takeaway from this is that developers will need to structure maintenance contracts with AHTS companies either through frame agreements or long-term charters to decrease their exposure to spot market day rates.

Future alternatives

While these lessons are key for floating wind developers in the immediate future, new players are looking towards alternative heavy O&M maintenance.

Analysis of the installation compared to the maintenance campaign revealed that the lack of a consistent marine spread for maintenance resulted in significantly more vessel days. As such, two important lessons have been learned: the identification of an appropriate O&M port with sufficient facilities and availability, and the establishment of secure fleet contracts to mitigate exposure to high spot market day rates.

This full insight has been written by Sarah Mclean, Content Writer/ Market Research Analyst at Spinergie. This company transforms operational and maritime data into actionable insights to reduce your carbon footprint and increase efficiency.