Oceaneering to Prepare Seabed for Moray East Wind Farm

Offshore services company Oceaneering has won a contract to complete seabed route and debris clearance for the Moray East Wind Farm project in the Moray Firth, Scotland.

The contract, of an undisclosed value, has been awarded by Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Limited (MOWEL).

As part of the project, Oceaneering will provide a vessel, route preparation tools, remotely operated vehicle (ROV), survey, and personnel to complete seabed route and debris clearance operations for the wind farm’s export cable routes.

The project, which will be completed early in the second quarter of 2020, is the latest to be secured by the company for Moray East, with the company’s ROV and tooling divisions already having supported the proejct.

The work scope, to be carried out by Oceaneering's Aberdeen-based team, will involve the deployment of the company’s Route Preparation Plough, RP15 – part of Oceaneering’s route and boulder clearance system.

"The RP15 plough, which will be used for boulder clearance prior to cable installation, has been deployed on multiple North Sea wind farm projects including Race Bank, Westermost Rough, Hornsea1 and East Anglia1 export routes and Beatrice for array routes, with over 3000 km of routes successfully cleared to date," Oceaneering said.

The Moray East Offshore Wind Farm construction project is 22 km off the Caithness coast. It is the second of three wind farms in the area and will consist of 100 wind turbines, providing an overall generating capacity of 950 megawatts – enough to power 950,000 homes. Three, 86 km export cables from offshore to shore will transfer electricity from the wind farm.

The wind farm is being developed by Moray Offshore Windfarm East Ltd (MOWEL), which is a joint venture company owned by Diamond Green Limited (33.4%), EDPR (33.3 %), ENGIE (23.3%) and CTG (10%).