Page 33: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Mar/Apr 2026)

32 34

By Philip Lewis, Research

Director, Intelatus Global Partners ver the last few years, the energy trilemma has pivoted away from energy transition to energy security and affordability. As a result, offshore oil & gas exploration and produc-

O tion activity, including deepwater activity, has been relatively healthy. Construction, operational support and decommissioning activity has supported the deploy- ment of large anchor handlers and MSVs.

At the same time, the global foating offshore wind forecast has “moved to the right” due to cancelled proj- ects, disappointing auctions, cost increases and political headwinds. Within the offshore wind sector, foating wind remains an emerging technology. The 2035 com- missioned foating wind capacity forecast is ~5GW, rising to ~14GW by 2040.

Despite this less positive foating wind forecast than previously presented, foating wind projects will drive de- mand (and shortages) for the largest AHTSs and MSVs.

Depending on oil & gas demand for large AHTSs, shortages could appear by 2029-2031 and shortages in large MSV supply could emerge as early as 2030-2031.

These are the fnding of a new foating wind vessel forecast

FLOATING WIND & by Intelatus global partners.

THE VARIABILITY OF FLOATING

WIND PROJECTS

A commercial scale foating wind farm will be made up of a group of turbines supported by foating structures,

DEEPWATER OIL & GAS moored to the seabed by a station keeping system, with generated electricity passed along dynamic array cables, of- ten to a bottom-fxed offshore substation. On the face of it, this sounds simple. It is not – there are many challenges to address, including: • What turbine to use: The western OEMs are cur- rently favoring 15MW turbines for bottom-fxed proj- ects, although Siemens is likely to release a 20MW+

Two Worlds Collide turbine in the next decade (again for bottom-fxed proj- ects). Chinese OEMs are pushing the boundaries with 16-25MW turbines, some of which are designed specif-

MARCH/APRIL 2026 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 33