An integrated provider of safe, high quality, innovative services and technologies for the subsea industry, DeepOcean has ramped-up its activities in the offshore wind sector in recent years. We spoke to Pierre Boyde, Commercial & Business Development Director.
PES: Welcome to the magazine. Would you like to begin by explaining a little about the background of your company and how you serve the wind industry?
Pierre Boyde: DeepOcean specialises in providing subsea services for offshore construction such as subsea installation, seabed intervention, survey, IMR and decommissioning. These services are common in the oil and gas market and are also utilised for other industries such as defence and telecommunications. One of the specialities of the UK office is the installation and trenching of cables, which is also a major requirement for offshore renewables.
PES: What prompted the company’s move into the wind sector? Is it an area that is delivering growth for you?
PB: Every wind farm has a large number of submarine cables associated with developing the infrastructure at the wind farm site and back to shore. Inter array cables connect wind turbines to each other and to offshore sub-stations, which are in turn connected back to shore via export cables.
For many of these cables, trenching is also required on the seabed to protect cables, particularly in shallow water areas. DeepOcean has the world’s largest fleet of trenchers in addition to installation vessels; therefore, it made sense for us move into this sector. DeepOcean is growing and offshore renewables are a major contributor to this growth.
PES: And what’s your on-the-ground assessment of the wind market right now? Have we ‘turned the corner’ in Europe, as most of the commentators are asserting?
PB: The wind market provides for us a large number of opportunities. This year we have worked on BARD, Alpha Ventus and DolWin 1 wind farms, as well as tendering for many other projects.
PES: We note that you’ve got a 50% interest in ADUS, can you explain how their 3D sonar survey capabilities are particularly suited to the offshore wind industry?
PB: ADUS is a really exciting and interesting area of our business. The technology provides high quality 3D visualisations of the seabed and subsea infrastructure such as cables, hardware and debris. ADUS started using this in the salvage and defence industries, providing high quality images of wrecks and have applied this technology to the oil & gas sector. Most recently this has been used to support the salvage of the Costa Concordia.
