Monthly Archives: March 2021

A renewed interest in wind energy is coming from the Biden administration, making an offshore wind farm on the Central Coast a possibility once again.

This week, the Biden administration released a multi-layer plan to expand offshore wind energy production in the U.S., which includes investments in port infrastructures and $3 billion in loans for the offshore industry.

"The President recognizes that a thriving offshore wind industry will drive new jobs and economic opportunity up and down the Atlantic coast, in the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific waters," White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, said.

Mayor of Morro Bay John Headding says this change in narrative has allowed for the removal of some of the roadblocks in the way of an offshore wind turbine project on the Central Coast.

"We've been talking about this and trying to work through the issues for over five years, so I'm extremely excited not only for the state and the industry but for Morro Bay, economically, it will be something that will be fairly significant," Headding said.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identified an area 20-25 miles off the coast of Morro Bay as one of two spots in California that would be ideal for this type of energy production site.

"[That's] because the winds out there are blowing all the time and there is a "shovel ready," as I call it, connection to the grid through the Morro Bay Power Plant," Headding explained.

Several stakeholders are still trying to pinpoint an exact location, as a previous site chosen on the Central Coast would have impeded Naval activity.

"Were in the process of finding a suitable region that marries the energy needs of our state with the national security uses of the region, including military testing and training operations. Im heartened the Biden administration is interested in expanding this burgeoning industry, which will create good-paying clean energy jobs while bringing us closer to a renewable energy future, and I will continue working to bring offshore wind opportunities to the Central Coast," Congressman Salud Carbajal said.

Headding says the output of energy from the turbines is expected to produce more energy than Diablo Canyon.

But what does this mean for those who make a living out on the water? Headding says a company that had previously bid on the project had an agreement with local fishing groups, but that could change now that bids for the site will go up again.

"It would behoove any company that would enter into the bidding process to discuss with the local fishing industry possible mitigation of impacts for developing the wind farm," Headding said.

A spokesperson for Representative Carbajal's office says:

The mayor says there are 11 companies who have submitted paperwork to bid on the area identified by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for an offshore site on the Central Coast.

The auction process for the bids could begin later this year.

Headding says the excess energy produced by the turbines could potentially be stored at the proposed battery energy storage plant that looks to break ground at the site of the former Morro Bay Power Plant next year.

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Renewed interest in offshore wind energy could bring a site to the Central Coast - KSBY San Luis Obispo News

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In response to the Biden Administration's announcement today on offshore wind, Joris Veldhoven, treasurer and commercial director at Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a developer that has bid into the latest round of offshore wind solicitation in New Jersey, released the following statement:

This bold agenda to develop offshore wind in the United States will create tens of thousands of jobs and build a more robust green energy economy in this country. The investments in strengthening port infrastructure and the domestic supply chain will open communities across the coastal U.S. up to tremendous economic opportunity on the international stage. As a developer, we appreciate the advancement of critical permitting milestones for projects in New Jersey and beyond. Together, these priorities will accelerate offshore wind growth and its many economic benefits for coastal communities.

"New Jersey is particularly well-poised to seize this opportunity and meet the growing demand for labor thanks to the strength of its unions. Its why we are proud to be partnering with six local unions to train and hire the workforce that will build New Jerseys green infrastructure as part of our bid submission. We look forward to working with elected officials at every level of government, in New Jersey and in Washington, to help realize this vision.

About Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC:

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, LLC is a 50/50 partnership between Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America. The joint venture formed in December 2018 to co-develop a 183,353 acre Lease Area located approximately 10-20 miles off the New Jersey coast between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light. Atlantic Shores is strategically positioned to meet the growing demands of renewable energy targets in New York, New Jersey and beyond, with strong and steady wind resources close to large population centers with associated electricity demand. Atlantic Shores, once fully developed, has the potential to generate over 3,000 MW (3 GW) in wind energy and power nearly 1.5 million homes. The capital and expertise needed to develop such a large area is significant. Together, Shell and EDF Renewables have the investment capability and industry experience to bring this project to scale safely, efficiently and cost effectively. For more info: http://www.atlanticshoreswind.com

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Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Responds to Biden Administration Plan to Create Tens of Thousands of Green Jobs and Strengthen Renewable Infrastructure...

The AtlantiCare health system broke ground Tuesday on a new $38 million Medical Arts Pavilion in Atlantic City. Land for the pavilion was donated by the Casino Reinvestment Authority, which also pledged $15 million to the project. According to AtlantiCare, the new facility will allow it to expand access to care for underserved populations when it opens late next year.

The Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills is proceeding with a $100 million capital improvement project, after receiving federal funding. It will break ground in a few months on a new addition that is also scheduled for completion next year.

Several groups in the state are protesting a bill they say would shut out some New Jersey companies from government contracts on construction projects. The bill, which has advanced through the Legislature, would require that more public works projects use construction companies that abide by union rules. The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey opposes the legislation. Founder and CEO John Harmon says the measure would hurt Black- and Hispanic-owned companies, most of which are nonunion. The bill is also opposed by the Associated Builders and Contractors of New Jersey.

With the Biden administration looking to expand offshore-wind projects off the New Jersey coast, the state is taking steps to make sure workers are prepared for clean-energy jobs. The Department of Labor and Workforce Development has a $1 million grant available to fund job-training programs as part of a partnership with Public Service Electric and Gas, with the aim of recruiting and training 2,000 workers, particularly from the states big cities. PSE&G is a funder of NJ Spotlight News.

WATCH: Business Report: Jobs added, economy grows, housing prices rise, SBA loans expand

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Business Report: Health care systems expanding, government contracts, offshore wind projects | Video - NJ Spotlight

NEW LONDON, Conn. (WTNH) President Biden recently released a plan to help the offshore wind industry with faster federal approval, low interest loans, and funding for changes to U.S. ports.Its focused on New York and New Jersey but many are hoping it helps a Connecticut project as well.

Fishermen say they disturb marine life and others say they ruin their view but offshore wind farms are also seen as an effective way to harvest renewable energy.

President Joe Biden is now pushing to make it easier to get federal approval for offshore wind projects. He is also looking to providelow interest loans, as well as, funding for changes to U.S. ports.

Its exciting the Biden administration is pulling out all stops to try to get this to go, said Mayor Michael Passero, (D) New London.

New London is hoping to become a hub for the offshore wind industry with a focal point being the State Pier to which the state plans to make $157 million in infrastructure upgrades.

The citys partners Orsted and Eversource said in a joint statement.

Were proud to be building the first utility-scale offshore wind farms serving New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut, and we stand ready to support the bold path President Biden is charting for a nation fueled by affordable clean energy.

With the onset of the partnership between Orsted and Eversource, the revenues to the city of New London have increased tenfold from what they were, said Mayor Passero.

In the short term it creates a lot of jobs building these turbines, servicing the turbines, but in the long run its our contribution to climate change, Sen. Chris Murphy.

The presidents plan would generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 3030. Thats enough to power 10 million American homes and cut millions in metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

With the State Pier project however others like the DRVN salt company and longshoremen say they were driven out by the Connecticut Port Authority.

We would like to have seen it done differently but were moving forward now with the use of this pier, said Mayor Passero.

With an green industry the mayor hopes will mean sustainable opportunities for decades to come.

Link:

New London reacts to President Bidens plan to help offshore wind industry - WTNH.com

Recent events in Palma, a town in the volatile Cabo Delgado province in the north of Mozambique, have taken bloodshed in the region to new levels. Dozens of people were killed when hundreds of Islamist militants stormed the town on Wednesday, 25 March. They targeted shops, banks and a military barracks.

The attack has been devastating for the people living in the area as well as the country. The escalating violence has already left at least a thousand dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The conflict has put a temporary lid on plans that have been in the making for more than a decade since rich liquefied natural gas (LNG) deposits were discovered in the Rovuma Basin, just off the coast of Cabo Delgado. Western majors like Total, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP entered the Mozambique LNG industry as well as Japans Mitsui, Malaysias Petronas and Chinas CNPC.

The gas projects are estimated to be worth US$60 billion in total. Some observers recently predicted that Mozambique could become one of the top ten LNG producers in the world.

The development of the projects had led to the area becoming a hive of economic activity.

The plan was for Palma to become a LNG manufacturing hub where hundreds of skilled workers would be located. And, more broadly, the hope was that it would drive the rapid advancement of a country that ranks close to the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index. More than 70% of the population have been classified as multidimensionally poor by the United Nations Development Programme.

The LNG projects in the northern Cabo Delgado area represented a silver lining of hope. Since 2012 the major multinational energy companies have spent billions of dollars on developing the offshore gas sites. Today, offshore exploration in the Cabo Delgado area includes Africas three largest LNG projects. These are the Mozambique LNG Project (involving Total and previously Anadarko) worth $20 billion; the Coral FLNG Project (involving Eni and Exxon Mobil) worth $4.7 billion; and the Rovuma LNG Project (involving Exxon Mobil, Eni and CNPC) worth $30 billion.

Production was scheduled to start in 2024 but intensifying attacks near the gas site on the Afungi peninsula are now posing serious challenges to the production time lines.

There have been no material benefits for the people of Cabo Delgado thus far. Moreover, many local people feel deeply aggrieved because many were evicted and had to relocate soon after the discovery of gas in Cabo Delgado to make way for LNG infrastructure development.

Cabo Delgado is Mozambiques most northern province. Neglected over many years, the people who live there have been politically marginalised. And the area is underdeveloped.

Since independence in 1975 investment, and rising incomes, were largely confined to the capital Maputo in the south as well as the southern parts of the country.

In addition, the central government in Maputo has only had a fragile and precarious control over the territory and borders of the country. A 16-year civil war that involved clashes between the central government and Renamo, a militant organisation and political movement during the liberation struggle and now opposition party, claimed more than a million lives.

More recently, since 2017, the militant Islamic movement, Ansar al-Sunna, locally known as Al-Shabaab, has been active in Cabo Delgado. It now poses the biggest security threat in the country, rendering some of the northern parts almost ungovernable.

The militants took advantage of the Mozambican governments failure to exercise control over the entire territory of the country.

Ansar al-Sunna reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2018. It was acknowledged as an affiliate of ISIS-Core in August 2019. In view of this, the US Department of State has designated Ansar al-Sunna Mozambique, which it refers to as ISIS-Mozambique, as a foreign terrorist organisation.

What makes this armed force so significant is that the movement has orchestrated a series of large scale and targeted attacks. In 2020 this led to the temporary capturing of the strategic port of Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado.

In addition, the turbulence caused by the militants attacks has displaced nearly 670,000 people within northern Mozambique. Obviously, foreign companies in the LNG industry with their considerable investments feel threatened, especially at the current stage where final investment decisions have to be taken.

In recent months the situation in Cabo Delgado has gone from bad to worse. In November 2020, dozens of people were reportedly beheaded by the militants. Now the bloodshed has spread to Palma.

Amid the development of an increasingly alarming human rights situation towards the end of last year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, appealed for urgent measures to protect civilians. She described the situation as desperate and one of grave human rights abuses. Bachelet also stated that more than 350,000 people had been displaced since 2018.

There is little doubt that Islamist insurgents are increasing the scale of their activities in Cabo Delgado. A lack of governance and a proper security response by both the Mozambican government and southern African leaders make this a case of high political risk for the LNG industry.

The escalation of the insurgency can potentially jeopardise the successful unlocking of Mozambiques resource wealth. Until now, the main LNG installations and sites have not been targeted, but the attacks in Palma have brought the turbulence dangerously close to some of the installations.

The Mozambican armed forces are clearly stretched beyond the point where they can protect the local communities. A part of the solution lies in Southern African Development Community or at least South African military support to stabilise Cabo Delgado and restore law and order in the short term. Wider international support might even be necessary.

But this would require the Mozambican government to change its stance by allowing multinational foreign military forces on its soil.

At the same time, a long term solution should be pursued. This will require better governance of the northern areas and the local people in what has been called a forgotten province.

It is clear that Cabo Delgado is an area which the central government in Maputo is unable to control, govern effectively, or even influence. In short, weak state institutions including weak armed forces are key to the problems of Mozambique and specifically the turbulence in the northern parts.

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Offshore gas finds offered major promise for Mozambique: what went wrong - The Conversation CA

The offshore wind industry is on the cusp of major growth. We are entering an era where oil majors arent just making vague ESG commitments, but actually putting their money on the table for offshore wind development.

However, while the results from the UKs Round 4 tender certainly demonstrate that the likes of BP are willing to bid billions for seabed leasing, there are concerns that the winners of this round may have overbid raising the cost of developing their projects.

The pressure on developers to keep projects viable often leads them to choose contractors and equipment suppliers based on price rather than quality or proven experience. In recent years, we have seen some developers opt for suppliers with a known track record of losses, simply because up-front costs are low.

Over the years, we have seen this race to the bottom result in countless insurance claims due to contractor error. Since 2016, global offshore wind claims across the industry have increased by 30% year on year, with contractor error and defective design and materials making up over 60% of claims by cause of loss. A majority of claims are incurred either during construction, or down the line from errors during the construction phase itself.

The cost of losses typically ends up with the insurer, rather than the developer or even the original manufacturer, where the loss may actually originate from resulting in a perverse incentive for developers to avoid managing obvious risks due to cost.

Recently, a developer of an offshore wind farm opted to contract a cable manufacturer known for multiple losses in the industry, agreeing to only test 25% of cables for quality and defects in order to keep costs as low as possible. This lack of quality control opens up the project to significant cable losses down the line.

In this case, the developer was likely banking on a soft insurance market, where insurers offer wide terms and policy conditions covering projects even despite glaring deficiencies in risk management, to pick up the bill when things went wrong.

As more oil & gas majors enter the offshore wind industry, insurers active in the oil & gas market are likely to follow, offering lower premiums and wider terms and conditions in order to buy market share.

However, these insurers are used to policies with the expectation of a similar risk profile to traditional energy infrastructure, with low frequency, high-cost losses. These insurers are also used to limited business interruption and delay in start-up exposure, as well as much higher deductibles than has been experienced in the renewable energy offshore market.

As such, insurers traditionally focused on oil & gas exposure entering the renewables offshore market without updating premiums, policies, and terms and conditions will likely be unsustainable and exit the market once losses start piling up. This could limit available insurance capacity and threaten the long-term viability of the offshore renewables market.

If insurers had underwritten every offshore construction project to date, without significant reinsurance insurance that the insurance market buys for itself to protect its own account they would have certainly lost money over the last ten years.

We have seen a similar dynamic play out in onshore wind. As losses started to pile up, a number of insurers have been unable to continue underwriting such costly projects and ended up completely exiting the market. Those that stayed have had to re-examine premium, deductibles and terms in order to effectively manage risk and thereby reduce the scale and frequency of losses. What has become increasingly clear is that there needs to be a greater degree of risk sharing, not only between the insurance market and the developer or owner but with all parties, all the way down the chain to subcontractors.

Onshore, this hardening of the market is starting to turn the corner in ensuring a fair allocation of risk throughout the supply chain. However, the offshore industry cannot afford not to go through a similar process, and the entry of new markets with an oil and gas perspective will certainly not help in industry in the longer term.

As projects can cost billions to develop, a single offshore wind farm can have multiple insurers covering the project on a syndicated basis. A major loss is more likely to have repercussions on the whole renewables insurance industry, rather than one or two unlucky insurers who backed a risky project and current practices can complicate claims, inflating the cost of a loss.

In order to keep insurance cheap, brokers will often place what are known as verticalised placements with the risks from a single project absorbed by multiple insurers, each offering different policy definitions, terms, sub-limits, deductibles and premiums. These verticalised placements tend to muddle the overall policy terms between each insurer together in an attempt to provide complete protection for a client.

However, this approach could ultimately open renewable energy companies up to complications and extra costs when it comes to settling a claim later down the line, as insurers and expensive legal advisors try to clarify grey areas between different policy wordings and definitions.

With the expansion of offshore wind into emerging markets, and the involvement of new players across the supply chain, now is the time to ensure the race to lower the cost of development does not result in disasters due to a lack of risk accountability. By quantifying and managing risk throughout the supply chain, the offshore wind industry can ensure that the market remains insurable and ultimately facilitate a faster, wider rollout of new wind farms at a critical point in the energy transition.

Fraser McLachlan is the chief executive of specialist renewable energy insurer GCube

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'Big Oil's push into offshore wind could threaten the long-term viability of the sector' | Recharge - Recharge

Offshore staff

PARIS Bureau Veritas (BV) and Nexans have signed a partnership agreement to reduce risk and promote best practices for turnkey deliveries of high voltage power cables used for connecting offshore wind farms to onshore grids.

Nexans provides high voltage cables to transfer the energy generated by offshore wind farms. As offshore wind farm installations are farther away from shores and in deeper waters, the risk of failures could increase, making the reliability and quality of cables, and their installation, key. The partnership builds on BVs maritime expertise and extensive experience in risk management to help the offshore wind market reduce operational risk.

With thorough risk management and compliance with industry best practices, BV said it can offer its assurance on Nexans end-to-end engineering, procurement, construction, and installation (EPCI) operational model. Effectively managing risk provides operational assurance and reliability with less downtime, reduced repair and replacement costs, and increased trust.

Nexans CEO Christopher Gurin, said: Together, we will certify the Nexans Way of managing EPCI projects and risks, develop new standards for the offshore wind farm and interconnection industry, reduce the risk profile of such projects and develop improved standards.

Matthieu de Tugny, executive vice president Marine & Offshore at Bureau Veritas, said: At Bureau Veritas, we help shape a world of trust. By creating standards and verifying all criteria are met, we can help Nexans build further trust. Our marine expertise and experience in risk management and subsea to surface connections combined with state-of-the-art software tools will make this collaboration a success.

03/30/2021

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Nexans, Bureau Veritas form offshore wind power cable partnership - Offshore Oil and Gas Magazine