Daily Archives: September 3, 2022

Its called the Carolina Long Bay wind energy area.

It covers 110,091 acres of ocean, roughly 15 miles offshore from Brunswick County. The entire area sits roughly straight out from the North Carolina-South Carolina border.

And it appears North Carolinas largest electric utility and a French oil company won the auction on Wednesday, May 11, to lease a pair of sites wind energy production.

The Department of the Interior says TotalEnergies Renewables USA, LLC bid $160 million to win the right to build an offshore wind farm in the westernmost 54,937 acre section of the area. Duke Energy Renewables Wind, LLC won the bid for the easternmost 55,124 acre area, with a $155 million bid.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says the area together, if developed, could generate 1.3 gigawatts or more of energy, enough to power nearly 500,000 homes.

Investments from the two developers mean increased supply chain investment and recruitment, workforce development and thousands of good-paying jobs and infrastructure development that will support other North Carolina industries," said Katharine Kollins, President of the Southeastern Wind Coalition, in a statement.

Federal officials called the auction a significant step towards the Biden-Harris administrations goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

The Biden-Harris administration is moving forward at the pace and scale required to help achieve the Presidents goals to make offshore wind energy a reality for the United States, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in the announcement of the sale. Todays sale is further proof that there is a strong industry interest and that Americas clean energy transition is here.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has set targets of 2.8 gigawatts of wind energy generated off of the NC coast by 2030 and 8 gigawatts by 2040.

If developed, the newest proposed offshore wind farm would not be visible from shore.

Duke Energy officials estimate it will take about 10 years to develop the site. A site assessment plan, looking at how Duke will evaluate the wind energy potential of the area, will be developed during the next year.

TotalEnergies, the French energy company that won the other lease, reports it is considering developing floating wind energy platforms. The firm is building similar offshore wind farms in France, the United Kingdom, and in South Korea.

TotalEnergies is also building an offshore wind project off of the New York-New Jersey coast.

Back in 2017, the wind energy company Avangrid paid $9 million for a lease off of Kitty Hawk. It is expected to begin operations by the end of the decade.

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More Offshore Wind Power Coming to the Carolinas' Coast - PBS North Carolina

By The New Pelican Newspaper | on September 02, 2022

By RJ Boyle | Contributing Columnist

Pictured here is the Riley party from South Carolina, with a spectacular catch aboard the Lisa B from a few days back. Our goal was to land a swordfish. We set up shop about 16 miles offshore at 8:30 in the morning. We fished for an hour before getting our first bite.

We hooked the swordfish on a rigged bonito strip with a glow skirt. We fought the fish for 45 minutes before landing everyones first swordfish. As we put the baits out redeploying on our second drift, we got covered up in mahi mahi. We threw spinning rods tipped with bait and one by one began to fill the box. It sure is nice when a plan comes together. When we got to the dock, we cleaned the fish for well over an hour and a half. Everybody went home with plenty of dinners for the next month.

The near shore fishing was a bit slow this week. A few smaller Wahoo and lots of bonito were landed. If youre going to spend time fishing this weekend, I would suggest running offshore to look for mahi. There is a lot of scattered seaweed right now so dont be afraid to pull up on the patches and throw a few live baits to prospect. You can also troll around them quickly to see if the patch is holding fish.

Get tight!

RJ Boyle is the owner of RJ Boyle Studios in Lighthouse Point and has decades of experience fishing the waters off South Florida and beyond. To contact him at his studio or to inquire about his charter boats, visit rjboylestudio.com or call 954-420-5001.

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Fishing Report: The offshore bite is red hot - New Pelican Newspaper

A South African court has upheld a ban imposed on the energy giant Shell from using seismic waves to explore for oil and gas off the Indian Ocean coast.

The judgment delivered in Makhanda on Thursday marks a monumental victory for environmentalists concerned about the impact the exploration would have on whales and other marine life.

The 2014 decision granting the right for the exploration of oil and gas in the Transkei and Algoa exploration areas is reviewed and set aside, the high court ruled in the southern city.

Civil rights organisations and civilians celebrated outside the courthouse following the verdict, according to local media.

A Shell spokesperson said the company respect[s] the courts decision and would review the judgment to determine our next steps. Shell did not say if it would appeal against the judgment or not. We remain committed to South Africa and our role in the just energy transition, he said.

Last December the same court had issued an interim order prohibiting the firm from going ahead with its plans.

Green Connection, one of the environmental and human rights organisations that filed the case against Shell, said that civil society, traditional communities and small-scale [fishermen] have once again been vindicated by the courts.

The petroleum firm was set to collect 3D seismic data over more than 6,000 sq km (2,300 sq miles) of ocean off South Africas Wild Coast - a 300km (185-mile) stretch of rich waters housing exquisite marine life and natural reserves.

Campaigners argued the research would have sent extremely loud shock waves every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day for five months, potentially harming marine species and disrupting their routines.

South Africas energy ministry had backed the scheme, and criticised those who opposed it as thwarting investment in the countrys development.

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South African court bans offshore oil and gas exploration by Shell - The Guardian

Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has awarded Vista Analyse, Guidehouse, and Procurex the contract for the provision of consultancy services for the offshore wind tender the Norwegian Government will soon open for the Southern North Sea II (Srlige Nordsj II) area.

The contract, concluded on 24 August, follows the tender that the Ministry opened at the end of May ahead of auctioning off the first 1.5 GW of the total of 3 GW of offshore wind capacity to be awarded for development.

Led by Vista Analyse, the companies will assist with designing the auction model for Southern North Sea II, and with carrying out the actual auction for the first phase of Southern North Sea II.

Professionally, this is a challenging assignment. But we are confident that we have put together a team that can solve the task. Together with our partners in Germany and the US, we have both knowledge of specific Norwegian considerations and practical experience from offshore wind auctions in many countries, said Haakon Vennemo, the project manager and CEO at Vista Analyse.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy will announce the auction for the first 1,500 MW in Southern North Sea II during the first quarter of next year, with allocation scheduled for the summer of 2023.

The project/s selected in the first phase will not be interconnected to the grids of other countries and will deliver all of the generated electricity to the Norwegian grid, while those selected in the second auction will have the option to export the generated electricity outside Norway.

According to earlier information on the offshore wind area, the first turbines in Southern North Sea II could be installed in the second half of this decade.

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Three Consultancies to Help Set Up Norway's Upcoming Offshore Wind Auction - Offshore WIND

The death of billionaire Robert Brockman has once again brought so-called offshore tax loopholes to the spotlight. Brockman died earlier this month while preparing to stand trial in whats the largest tax-evasion case against an individual in history. In 2020, the Internal Revenue Service charged Brockman with hiding more than $2 billion in income in a complex, decades-long scheme using overseas accounts, foreign trusts and shell companies.

A new report released by the Senate Finance Committee, led by Ron Wyden (D-Ore), highlights one particular offshore loophole being used by wealthy Americans to hide billions in income. The committee zeroed in on the loophole, the shell bank loophole, following its investigation of Brockman.

Shell Bank Loophole Exposed

The 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was designed to crack down on offshore tax evasion, requiring foreign financial institutions to determine if certain accounts are held by U.S. citizens (and report it back to U.S. authorities). The report finds, however, that wealthy individuals, with their savvy tax planners and advisors, can circumvent the requirements using a scheme thats hindering the laws effectiveness. The scheme, as revealed by the Brockman investigation, involves dressing up shell companies as financial institutions.Banks are free of the legal responsibility of determining if certain accounts are held by U.S. citizens if the accounts are held by entities that are themselves financial institutions.

The report also found that obtaining global intermediary identification numbers(GIIN), the numbers assigned by the FATCA registration system to foreign financial institutions, is shockingly easy, with online or paper forms almost always approved without any meaningful due diligenceessentially allowing individuals to self-certify these types of accounts as legal entities and creating ample opportunities for wealthy taxpayers to withhold the reporting of vast amounts of income being held by the accounts.

In the case of Brockman, the banks stated that so long as they can identify the entitys GIIN number on an IRS published list of registered foreign financial institutions, under FATCA they are not required to affirmatively investigate whether accounts are owned or controlled by any U.S. persons or report those accounts to the IRS. This loophole allowed Brockman to funnel large sums of money to banks in Switzerland via wire transfers from the United States without triggering the reporting requirement. The report further highlights the difficulty of detecting the hidden beneficial ownership in offshore bank accounts belonging to wealthy U.S. taxpayers if its layered using shell companies with valid GIIN numbers.

The Tactic Runs Deep

The committee report further found that there are 84,000 entities with GIIN in the Cayman Islands alone, and likely thousands and thousands more of these shell companies disguised as financial institutions overseas that are potentially evading IRS scrutiny and taxation. In addition to tax evasion, theres also a threat of money laundering.

Offshore tax evasion poses a unique challenge because the IRSauthority to compel action by financial institutions or take enforcement action is largely limited by the territorial extent of U.S. tax laws, the report states. The report further calls for Congress and agencies to take additional steps to increase IRS resources to close these loopholes. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act outlines $80 billion in IRS funding for the understaffed agency, which will hopefully help with this task.

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Senate Committee on Finance Investigation Finds Offshore Account Reporting Loophole - Wealth Management

A new website launched this week from a group called Protect US Fishermen, looks at possible environmental and economic impacts of proposed offshore wind farms in the Pacific Ocean.

The informal coalition of more than two dozen organizations features a number of fishing groups, including members such as the Westport and Ilwaco charter boat associations.

Visitors to protectUSfishermen.org can find some details on the proposed wind turbine projects off the coast of Washington and Oregon, as well as learn about the potential impacts to commercial and recreational fishing from those in the industries.

The group looks at providing a look at the debate surrounding offshore wind development and provides an overview from the fishing community.

Heather Mann, executive director of Midwater Trawlers Cooperative and a member of the coalition, said that she is worried that many residents are unaware of the potential harm that offshore development could bring and hopes the website will help raise awareness.

I find it disturbing that the administration and many legislators are either unaware or are simply ignoring the well-documented science about negative impacts to the marine environment from turbine farms, Mann said.

She added that the current offshore wind proposals off the California coast are a direct threat to that ecosystem.

The website is aimed at educating people throughout the West Coast.

The new website is said to be only one part of a campaign about the concerns, and it also features a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, and live events.

Billboards, digital advertising, and print media are part of the coalitions campaign in the coming months.

Individuals who wish to get involved in the effort will find several options listed at protectUSfishermen.org.

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Website looks at offshore wind farms from the viewpoint of fishing industry - KXRO Newsradio

CVOW's trial phase, 2020 (Dominion Energy file image)

PublishedAug 28, 2022 11:16 PM by The Maritime Executive

The giant utility Dominion Energy has found itself in a disagreement with state regulators over a proposed performance guarantee for its $10 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, one of the largest planned wind farms in the U.S. development pipeline. The clause is enough of a concern for Dominion that it has threatened to scuttle CVOW altogether and walk away - a seismic shock for the budding U.S. offshore wind industry.

Dominion has historically been one of the most committed players in the U.S. offshore wind business. It was an early and enthusiastic entrant, beginning its planning for a small pilot project as early as 2012. The pilot stage was completed in 2020 andis one of only two (small) offshore wind farms operating in the U.S. today.

To build the full-scale 2.6 GW facility, Dominion is buying the only U.S.-built wind turbine installation vessel on the market, the future Charybdis, at a price of half a billion dollars- a financial commitment that no other developer or shipowner has been willing to match yet. Construction on the vessel is already well under way.

However, the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) - a regulator with a broad mandate governing insurance, railroads and utilities - has made a decision that may make CVOW untenable, according to Dominion. The SCC will allow Dominion to bill the cost of CVOW's development to household ratepayers in the form of a miniscule rider fee - but only if its turbines perform at a 42 percent capacity factor or better in any three-year period. Any shortfalls would be Dominion's to cover.

Dominion has appealed the decision, describing it as unprecedented and "unlawful." The firm warns that the guarantee is so broad that it would leave Dominion on the hook for any decline in power output - whether caused by a hurricane, cyberattack, climate change or any other factor.

"The Commissions unprecedented imposition of an involuntary performance guaranteecondition on its approvals, however, is untenable. As ordered, it will prevent the project from moving forward, and the company will be forced to terminate all development and constructionactivities," Dominion wrote in anappeal. "As recognized by the Commission, the project is favored by the General Assemblys support for offshore wind generation as a cornerstone of theCommonwealths plan for a clean and reliable energy future."

The disagreement follows a just few weeks after Dominion celebrated formal approval from the SCC for the project to move forward. The initial order was released August 8, and it noted that there would be some form of performance requirement, but did not give any details - until now.

Dominion's appeal to the SCC begins a rehearing process, and the company sounded an upbeat note in a statement to local TV media.

"We look forward to completing the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project as a regulated project to build on our long record of affordability and reliability," a Dominion spokesperson told local media.

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Dominion May End $10B Offshore Wind Project Over Performance Clause - The Maritime Executive

Innvotek and Eleven-I have demonstrated innovative technology solutions, alongside GE Renewable Energy and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, to support future offshore wind developments.

The two companies carried out the work through GE Renewable Energy and ORE Catapults Stay Ashore research and development programme, and the Robotics Challenge sub-project delivered through the Offshore Wind Innovation Hubs Innovation Exchange (OWiX) in partnership with KTN.

Innvotek, a Cambridge-based consultancy, has further developed a robotic crawler that uses magnetic technology to attach itself to a turbine generator and autonomously detect the presence of certain features in order to carry out maintenance work.

Derbyshire-based Eleven-I has used the project to develop its structural health monitoring system which uses software and data analysis to monitor blade health throughout its lifetime.

GE said that the development of robotics is seen as a vital component in the future roll out of offshore wind development in the UK, and according to ORE Catapult research, could cut inspection costs by almost 40 per cent in the years to come.

The Stay Ashore program continues to drive improvements for the offshore wind industry. These innovative solutions aim to improve operational efficiency and safety, said Vincent Schellings, Chief Technology Officer at GE Renewable Energy Offshore Wind.

This will be vital as the offshore wind industry grows to meet the worlds decarbonization targets. Were proud to base this research in the UK, supporting the UK with its target to reach 50 GW of installed offshore wind capacity by 2030.

In April, ORE Catapult and GE Renewable Energy tested a six-legged robot that the companies say could bring the wind industry over GBP 250 million in savings annually.

The testing showed how BladeBUGs robot can inspect wind turbine bolts autonomously, eliminating the need for technicians to loosen and retighten thousands of bolts per wind turbine as part of routine maintenance.

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UK Duo Demonstrates Offshore Wind Tech Solutions - Offshore WIND

Vineyard Wind has signed contracts with Maine-based Ironhouse and Houston-based EverLine to support the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project at various construction and operation stages.

EverLine, a provider of energy compliance, technical, and security solutions, will deliver complete Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) integration for the 62 wind turbines, a system that will connect the fields offshore and onshore substation, wind turbines, and offices.

The company will also be responsible for procuring equipment, configuring devices, installing and configuring SCADA software, and testing and commissioning all IT and SCADA systems.

Additionally, Ironhouse will provide the commissioning oversight for the onshore substation, wind turbine foundation, inter-array cables, wind turbines, and SCADA system.

The 800 MW Vineyard Wind 1, a 50-50 joint venture between Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) funds CI II and CI III, is currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts.

As we build the nations first offshore wind farm, we are proud to engage an ever-increasing amount of the US workforce in each step of the process. Vineyard Wind 1 is only the beginning. With each project, we will take a giant leap forward in building out this new industry, creating thousands of good-paying jobs and reducing the harmful effects of carbon pollution, said Klaus S. Moeller, CEO of Vineyard Wind.

Located 15 miles (approximately 24 kilometres) off the coast of Marthas Vineyard, the project is the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the US to achievefinancial closeand, at USD 2.3 billion, represents one of the largest investments in a single renewable energy project in the US.

Vineyard Wind 1will feature62 GE Haliade-X 13 MW wind turbines,to be installedby DEME Offshores US arm.

Scheduled to deliver its first power to the grid in 2023, the wind farm will generate enough electricity for more than 400,000 homes and businesses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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Two US Companies Join Vineyard Wind 1 Team - Offshore WIND

Offshore staff

VEST-AGDER, NorwayA 32-day tow and 4,200 nautical miles traveled around Australia represented one of Siem Offshore's longest tows in the company's history, Siem announced earlier this week.

"Two of its anchor handlers, Siem Amethyst and Siem Aquamarine, safely managed the long and challenging tow of Ocean Onyx from the Bass Strait Victoria to her temporary home Dampier, Western Australia," Siem stated on its LinkedIn page.

Siem Offshore has been busy offshore this year.

Last week,Siem Offshoresaid itsecured an 18-month extension to a contract offshore Canada for itsAvalon Seaanchor-handler tug supply (AHTS) vessel. TheIce Classvessel will continue operations for the client into second-quarter 2024.

In early August,Siem AHTS Pool AS, a subsidiary of Siem Offshore Inc., announced that Equinor Energy AS in Norway declared a three-month option for theSiem OpalAHTS from September.

In late July,Total E&P do Brazil declared the first of two options for theSiem AtlasandSiem Giantplatform supply vessels. Both vessels are now firm until June 2023.

Also in July, Siem Offshore do Brasil signed a new contract for theSiem Maragogioil spill response vesselfor a duration of three years. Commencement is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year and in direct continuation of the current contract.

08.30.2022

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Siem Offshore announces one of longest tows in its history | Offshore - Offshore magazine