Page 14: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (January 2020)

O? shore Wind

Q&A: Matt Tremblay, ABS

The Domino Effect

The next hot growth market is offshore wind;

Is the U.S. marine industry ready to meet demand?

he American Bureau of Shipping convened a conference to discuss the pace and direction of the U.S. offshore wind market, including challenges and opportunities for

T maritime, offshore, subsea and logistics markets. Matt

Tremblay, SVP, Global Offshore, ABS, moderated the event and shares some of its ? ndings here.

by Greg Trauthwein zation of OSVs that have been somewhat stranded for the last

Where do you see opportunities today for growth in the few years, it is likely that most of these (offshore wind) ves-

U.S. offshore wind sector?

There’s a lot of opportunities and growth that we’re go- sels are going to have to be speci? cally designed, new built ing to experience over the next ? ve to 10 years. The ques- vessels to support the unique technical aspects and functions.

tion isn’t so much ‘how much growth,’ rather how fast is

How does the new tech sweeping through the industry that growth going to happen and how much capacity is there today play into the growth in the offshore wind sector?

available on the design side, the construction side and the operation side of this business within the U.S. to support that Now this is a place where we are able to take advantage growth? of the things that we’re learning and in the offshore sector, speci? cally the OSV market, and apply a lot of that existing or newly emerging technology to the vessels that are going to

What do you see today as the main challenges to get this be operating in offshore wind. One example is hybrid power market up to speed and scale?

The biggest challenge around the industry is the invest- systems, as we have seen a lot of success in the OSV market ment decisions around the vessels that are going to be sup- over the last few years with the installation of battery and porting the installation and operations of offshore wind assets hybrid power systems to increase the ef? ciency of vessels in the United States. These are installation vessels and SOVs operating in the Gulf of Mexico and around the world. Also, that require an investment of $100m to $300m, an investment the application of new digital technologies create opportuni- that is very hard to make on spec. You don’t want to take a lot ties to use tools like digital twin for asset integrity manage- of risk in an emerging market with investment numbers that ment, as well to support other operating characteristics as far high. Having a contract that’s going to support that invest- as vessel optimization. I think the possibilities that we see ment to get that that investment from the banks, the ? nancial starting to come out of the offshore industry on the MODUs, support a project like this needs, is dif? cult when we’re still on the FPSOs, even on the OSVs; there are a lot of those in the infancy stages. Getting those ? rst few contracts going, similar types of technologies that we could apply to these

I think, is going to be one of the biggest hurdle for us to over- same vessels to take a marginally smaller CAPEX and result come to start seeing the exponential growth in the market. in a pretty good OPEX return over the next 20 years of the vessel’s life.

With many OSVs sitting idle, do you see a possibility for conversions, or is this mostly a newbuild market? What are some of the main questions you’re receiving from owners interested in this offshore wind market?

Looking at the needs of the wind farm installation and support vessels, like the vessels built and designed in Europe, Class has become a resource of technical expertise and while we would like to see new opportunities for greater utili- advisory services around OPEX optimization, around design 14 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • January 2020

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