The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has mobilised a survey vessel to begin evaluating seabed areas set aside for the country’s first major offshore wind auction.
The Fugro Venturer was mobilised in Aberdeen on Thursday, and will make its way to conduct pilot surveys in the eastern part of an offshore area dubbed Nordsjø II.
Earlier this year the NPD was tasked with progressing plans to license seabed areas for around 4.5GW of capacity in the Utsira Nord and Sørlige Nordsjø II areas of the Norwegian North Sea.
Nordsjø II covers around 1,000 square miles bordering the Danish North Sea, where shallower waters may prove suitable for bottom-fixed turbines.
Utsira Nord meanwhile is an area of some 380 square miles located northwest of Stavanger, which the government says is suitable for floating wind sites.
The Nordsjø II lease area will be split into two 1.5GW phases, the government has said, the first of which will be offered via an auction to projects that can be directly connected to the mainland grid.
© Supplied by NPDThe procurement forms the first stages of a major offshore wind build out proposed by the Norwegian government as it looks to open up vast new areas of licensing for fixed and floating projects, with the goal of reaching 30GW of capacity by 2040.
NPD chose Fugro Norway to collect and process data at the site earlier this summer.
“The mobilisation will take place in Aberdeen in Scotland today, 25 August. We’ll meet our representatives and key people on board the vessel, where we’ll also get a tour and a review of the equipment on board,” said geophysicist Lars Jensen, who is responsible for the procurement.
Arne Jacobsen, Assistant Director for Technology, Analyses and Coexistence, and geophysicist Olvar Løvås also represented NPD at the mobilisation meeting.
The 72m Venturer is able to carry out site and route survey tasks typically used to help optimise the design, engineering and placement of offshore wind farms, cables, pipelines, platforms and other structures.
The expedition will collect basic seismic, bathymetry and water column data, in addition to towing a magnetometer and side scan sonar.
“This is an important step toward developing offshore wind on the Norwegian shelf. The NPD has extensive experience and considerable expertise in operating seismic surveys from oil and gas activities. A sound factual basis is crucial in order to manage the resources in the best possible way,” Jacobsen added.
Data collection will begin in earnest this week and is scheduled to continue until early October. It will then be processed, a task expected to be completed around the end of the year.
“The NPD will have two representatives on board – one person responsible for quality-assuring the operation and a fishery expert,” Jensen said.
The data will then be used to support the drawing of development plans and will form a portion of the data sets issued to developers that are eventually awarded licences.