offshore

Asturias’ odyssey to lead offshore wind

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It has long been thought that the biggest challenge of wind energy offshore (navy) was on the high seas. However, the real challenge is not taming the wind or waves, but rather manufacturing, storing and moving steel giants on land. For a wind turbine to float in the Cantabrian Sea or the North Sea, it first needs to be born in a “factory port”. In short. Under this premise, the Port Authority of Avilés (APA) has just hit the table in the WindEurope Annual Event 2026the reference summit recently held in Madrid. As reported by local mediathe Asturian delegation has come with a clear objective: to consolidate its port as an undisputed industrial node in the European wind value chain. These are not empty declarations of intent. The directors of the APA, Ramón Muñoz-Calero and Manuel Echeverría, took advantage of the forum to hold strategic meetings with giants in the manufacturing of turbines, towers and cables, such as Taihan Cable, Prysmian and ArcelorMittal, as well as global engineering companies of the caliber of Ramboll, DNV and OHLA SATO. Avilés no longer wants to be just a transit point for goods; Its goal is to become ground zero where wind energy offshore takes shape before setting sail. The war for space. But wanting to be a giant means dealing with giant problems. Manufacturing for offshore wind requires manipulating foundations and “monopiles” that can reach 120 meters in length, 12 in diameter and weigh 2,500 tons. This gigantism generates an immediate logistical crisis: lack of space. Moving and assembling these enormous cylinders requires massive esplanades and ultra-resistant infrastructure. In fact, according to The New Spainnot just any dock serves this purpose; Very specific technical characteristics are needed capable of withstanding brutal demands, both in total weight and weight per support points. To prevent this bottleneck from slowing down its expansion, Avilés is on the offensive to gain square meters. In statements collected by Port NewspaperMuñoz-Calero has been blunt: “We are part of the industrial and innovation ecosystem of Avilés and we not only contribute to greater industrialization, but we are in a position to promote it.” The port solution involves two major strategic moves: the acquisition of the industrial land freed by the former ArcelorMittal Coke Batteries and the development of new expansion areas in El Estrellín. The rebirth of the Iberian “hub”. Within the framework of WindEurope, the president of Puertos del Estado, Gustavo Santana, highlighted the country’s potentialremembering that Spain has 46 ports of general interest, an ideal network for renewable deployment. The Government has imminent aid on the table: 212 million euros from the Port EOL-Mar program of the IDAE to adapt docks and drafts, in addition to a ‘Horizon 2030’ plan that will inject more than 1,000 million euros into sustainability. Avilés’ demonstrated muscle. If Avilés raises his hand to ask for funds and investments, he does so protected by his resume. The bet of the Aviles enclave is not a promise for the future, but a reality forged from steel and tons. According to data provided by local mediathe port’s track record is overwhelming: since January 2012, they have shipped more than 18,000 pieces for thirty onshore and offshore wind farm projects. This growth has been driven, in large part, by the success of local company Windar Renovables. The climax of this activity was experienced in 2022, when the port broke its absolute record by moving 140,000 tons of wind traffic in a single year. The Asian lifeguardWhat is happening in the Asturian docks transcends the local; it’s a question industrial geopolitics. For decades, the West lived under the mirage that the future was only in software, abandoning heavy industry. Now, Europe has taken a “bath of reality”: energy sovereignty depends, ultimately, on knowing how to smelt metal. This revolution covers the entire Asturian coast. A few kilometers from Avilés, in the Gijón port of El Musel, China has seen his opportunity. The landing of the Asian giant Dajin Offshore – which has joined forces with the Asturian group Zima to build a plant – shows that technology and the eastern financial muscle can be the oxygen ball that the Asturian auxiliary industry needs to lead again. Not in vain, the Asian country today builds 74% of the planet’s renewable energy. The industrial clock against the bureaucratic clock. Asturias, which has been trying to digest the mining and steel conversion for three decades, has before it the historic opportunity to abandon its role as a simple “quarry” to become a center of high added value. Offshore wind promises reindustrialization, highly qualified employment and a leading role in the European green economy. However, the success of this transformation will not be measured solely by political intentions or memoranda signed in offices. The real litmus test is in institutional agility and territory management. The international demand is there and cargo ships are already waiting on the coast. Now, the only question is whether the bureaucracy will be fast enough to ensure that, in the docks of Asturias, there is enough space and strength to sustain the full weight of Europe’s energy future. Image | Port of Aviles Xataka | Asturias has been digesting the reconversion for three decades. Now China wants to return him to the path of industrialization

drill a well 40 kilometers deep offshore

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Paper supports everything. A business breakfast on a sunny patio on the California coast, too. In this way, between cups of coffee, croissants and toast with jam that come and go, in 1957 a group of scientists from the picturesque American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC) when two of them, the geologist Harry Hess and the oceanographer Walter Munkdecided to launch a research proposal: open a huge hole in the Earth. And huge is not an exaggeration. What Hess and Munk proposed was to drill a kilometer well that would allow reaching and extracting a sample of what is known as Mohorovičić discontinuitythe limit between the Earth’s crust and the mantle, a strip located at a depth between 25 and 40 kilometers on the continents and 5 to 10 km if the ocean floor is taken as a reference. What’s more, once they were digging, they could even obtain a sample of the planet’s own mantle. “It sounded so simple and logical” The idea sounded delirious, but it was 1957, the space race gained strength and with Cold war As a backdrop, the US looked with interest at any project that would allow it to demonstrate its scientific power to the USSR. Besides, as Willard Bascom would recognizefrom AMSOC, the proposal seemed most reasonable when listened to with a hot coffee in hand, among colleagues and letting yourself be caressed by the morning sun on the Pacific coast. “The project sounded so simple and logical at a business breakfast on a sunny patio,” I wrote some time later about that peculiar brainstorming. Whether or not it turned out to be simple—which, spoiler: no, it wasn’t—the idea came to fruition. Its promoters knew how to take advantage of the strong winds of international rivalry and revealed how much the Russians were advancing in the field of science and how they looked with interest at Mohorovičić’s exploration of discontinuity. 57 was the year of the launch of the Sputnik Soviet, so the strategy worked and the drilling project ended up gaining the backing of the National Science Foundation (NSF), a government agency created seven years earlier. They named the adventure Mohole Projectcombination of “Moho”, the abbreviation of Mohorovičić, and “hole”, hole, in English. Short Simple. Easy to handle and understand. Everything that was not going to be the scientific challenge itself. “Where do we get the money?” It was not, however, the only question that scientists had to resolve. Another, equally or even more crucial, was “Where to drill?” The answer was a very specific location in the Pacific, near Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico. And there was a good reason for that. If the efforts were focused on the ocean floor, the team would have to drill significantly fewer meters of the Earth’s crust, a non-negligible advantage when the target is kilometers deep. The various problems The problem, of course, is that this requires operating from a boat, in the middle of the ocean, among the waves, and deploying the drilling equipment over more than 3,000 m of depth. “It’s like trying to work on the Earth’s surface from a helicopter, half a mile up,” explains to Vox geologist Donna Blackman. Today, with the Japanese ship Chikyu opening record wells, an international fleet that includes modern drilling vessels such as the Noble Globetrotter I—the one at the top of this article, built twelve years ago—and researchers reaching marks of 8,023 meters underwater, the challenge may sound less impressive, but in the 1950s it was. Oil companies had not yet embarked on drilling in such deep waters and undertaking an undertaking like the one proposed by AMSOC required first answering a series of technical questions: How to keep the ship stationary in the middle of the ocean to deploy the drilling equipment? Dropping anchors was not very practical given the enormous distance at which the seabed was located, so the final solution was to use a propeller system. They had to apply the same ingenuity to solve other equally or more difficult questions: How to deploy the pipeline at such low levels and between strong currents? How to drill with the depth required to reach Moho? And once these challenges are solved, how do we get the samples up to the ship? With a plan drawn up, in 1961 the scientists set sail aboard the ship CUSS I heading to Guadalupe Island to deploy what was supposed to be the first phase of Project Mohole. The technicians drilled half a dozen wells in total, the deepest of 183 meters and at an underwater depth of 3,600 m. The machinery penetrated 13 m into the basalt of the upper oceanic crust. That was very, very far from 6,000 meters necessary to reach Moho and the mantle, but it was quite a feat which even led President John F. Kennedy to cable the National Academy of Sciences to celebrate what he considered to be “a remarkable achievement, a historic milestone.” However, neither Kennedy’s good words, nor the promise of the company, nor the ability he had demonstrated to overcome technical challenges helped the Mohole Project go much further. In 1961, the Mohole project started, with the aim of drilling through Earth’s crust to the mantle. John Steinbeck (yes, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1yr later) was on the ship & I’ve just found his amazing (genuine joy plus snark) article: https://t.co/CPEB7mCf9q pic.twitter.com/DymGw2ta4o — Helen Czerski (@helenczerski) December 21, 2021 Drilling holes in the ocean floor was expensive and in 1966 the US Congress decided that it was not interesting to continue paying for it. Add to that bureaucratic errors, the dissolution of AMSOC in 1964 and differences between the members of the team about what the next steps should be and you will have the epitaph of a project that, nevertheless, is remembered as a special chapter in 20th century science and served to demonstrate the interesting possibilities of drilling the ocean floor. The Mohole Project It didn’t mark the end … Read more

Neptun Deep, the largest offshore field in the EU

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Europe has spent almost five years desperately searching for gas that does not come from Russia. When the Commission finally succeeded at the beginning of the year and was able to approve the total import ban on Russian gasyou found yourself in another scenario but the same problem: now the uncomfortable partner is the United Stateswhich has become the largest supplier of LNG on the continent. The only real way to achieve gas sovereignty is to produce at home. And one of the answers may be 160 kilometers off the Romanian coast, in the deep waters of the Black Sea: the Neptun Deep deposit. The site. Neptun Deep It is on the Romanian continental shelf of the Black Sea, on an area of ​​7,500 km² and with depths ranging from 100 to 1000 meters. Proven and probable reserves are estimated around 100 bcm (billions of cubic meters). Context. The introduction glimpses a good part of the current situation: Russian supply has fallen from 45% to 19%, as report this roadmap from the European Commission less than a year ago, the end of transit of gas pipelines through Ukraine, the growing dependence on LNG from the US and the EU producing today 30% less than at the beginning of the decade. This drop in production has its reason in forced closure of the giant Groningen, the largest deposit in the EU. And in this pressing context comes confirmation that Romania is already the largest gas producer in the EU, as supports Eurostat. Why is it important. For Romania, whose annual gas consumption round The 10 – 11 bcm implies the real possibility of stopping imports and an important revitalization of the industry. But for Europe its relevance is strategic: A connection to the Black Sea gas corridor. The Western Balkans and Moldova have historically depended of Russian gas, in Neptun Deep they could find a direct substitute. More diversification in supply in the form of domestic sources. Although it is true that globally it is not differential, it is a sovereign gas made in the EU that does not transit through hostile countries. Advance for other European off shore. The future of the Romanian regulatory model can serve as a roadmap for other countries with off shore potential, such as Greece or Cyprus. A soap opera exploitation. The block was first explored in 2008 and in 2012 the first exploratory well, Domino-1, was drilled. ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom were originally involved, but after years of regulatory blockage and prosecutor, ExxonMobil advertisement its withdrawal in 2019. The project was left in limbo until the Romanian state company Romgaz bought ExxonMobil’s participation in 2022. It was the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that unblocked everything: Romania reformed its offshore law and from there, the partners decided to undertake the investment, committing 4,000 million euros. With the Neptun Alpha production platform scheduled to be installed in 2026 and wells in drilling since March 2025, first production is estimated for 2027 and is expected a peak production of between 8 and 10 bcm annually. Yes, but. We have already seen that Neptun Deep has appeared on the map when it is most needed in Europe, but its impact on the old continent is relative: By scale: its production of between 8 and 10 bcm annually represents 2.5% of European consumption (390 bcm, according to the International Energy Agency). In short, it will not change the dependency nor does it have the weight to alter prices. The conditions of the Black Sea have their own challenges, with the absence of oxygen in the deep layers, certain seismicity or the presence of hydrogen sulfide in some formations. Construction logistics will not be easy. By timing. Gas will arrive in 2027 at the earliest, when European demand has already been declining for years due to electrification. The utility window is narrow. On the other hand, it could discourage electrification in Romania and the Balkans. In Xataka | Europe has reached the end of winter with depleted gas reserves. A country has a model to save it: Spain In Xataka | Europe managed to become independent from Russian gas. Now you have another headache: how to become independent of US gas Cover | Romgaz Romania

The countries of northern Europe are full of offshore wind. So they’ve started to steal the wind from each other

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The world has thrown itself into the arms of renewables to meet the goals of decarbonization. Each country is developing its strategy And, if in some the photovoltaic takes the lead, in others it is the wind that splits the cod. The problem is the commitments: fill the plate field implies that crops receive less sunlight. And fill the world with wind turbines – apart from visual impact, for fishing and for the birds-, is causing something as curious as it is problematic. Countries that are stealing the wind from their neighbors. Wake effect. When the wind hits the wind turbine bladesthese rotate, generating kinetic energy and electricity. The wind continues its path, but after passing through a wind turbine, it does so with less force. Multiply that by fields full of these mills and we have what is known as the ‘wake effect‘ or ‘wake effect’. This air that has already passed through a wind turbine station does so with a lower speed and greater turbulence. And if this is important, it is because the wind takes time to recover: the wakes can extend more than 100 kilometers after crossing a field of windmills. wind thieves. These facilities are usually far from each other to better take advantage of the currents, but if under certain circumstances they extend tens of kilometers, and up to the aforementioned hundred, imagine the consequences for the wind turbines that remain behind that installation that receives the first “hit” of wind. It is not an assumption: there is measurements by SAR satellite that confirm that, if a wind farm is built upwind of another, the wind speed it receives is 9% lower, causing it to have a reduction between 10% and 20% compared to that first installation. This is what is known as “wind theft,” a colloquial term for something that is easy to understand, but not so easy to fix. This GIF of The Telegraph illustrates it perfectly: Princess Elisabeth. As we read in BBCthe lawyer Eirik Finseras, specialized in offshore wind energy, “is a somewhat misleading term because you cannot steal something that you cannot own. Nobody owns the wind” – del Sol, yes, a Galician -. But of course, the fact that no one owns the wind does not exempt that park on the windward side from suffering the effects of the park built on the leeward side. In the North Sea, this is already becoming a problembecause the denser and larger the wind farm, the more intense the wake effect will be. Belgium is building Princess Elisabeth, a huge park that will add a whopping 3.5 GW of offshore wind capacity to the country’s accounts. It is a really huge offshore facilitybut although it will allow the addition of those 3.5 GW, it will also affect the existing Belgian parks due to a wake that will extend 55 kilometers beyond the installation. According to the accounts of the University of Leuven, the oldest Belgian facilities located to the east will experience: An 8.5% reduction in annual electricity production. Losses of up to 15% on very windy days. Impact. That in Belgian parks, but of course, it is also an international problem because the wind does not understand borders. By 2030, it is estimated that the current capacity of offshore wind energy in the North Sea will triple. This implies that thousands of turbines will be erected in a very short time with Belgium, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands willing to obtain, in total, 65 GW of offshore wind energy. The problem is knowing what will happen to these trails, since it is estimated that the 1,400 MW installation in the Dutch area of Borssele will cause a reduction of 2.7% on average in some Belgian wind farms. It is a very clear case of how the Netherlands is “stealing” the wind from Belgium. It is logical to understand the interest in offshore wind Bigger blades. In a report by BBCPablo Ouro, a civil engineering researcher at the University of Manchester, points out that they have been seeing wake effects for years, but that “the problem is that, to achieve emissions neutrality, we will need to triple offshore wind capacity and some of these new turbines will operate very close to those already in operation. There will be more and more crowds and the wake effects will have a greater impact.” And it is no longer a question of the number of mills, but of their dimensions. In the North Sea we are seeing efforts to achieve both greater heights for the mills themselves (to take advantage of other currents that are not being taken advantage of right now, such as larger blades that receive even more force from the wind. They are imposing mega-constructions that will also affect this wake effect, aggravating the problem. Solutions? Different countries are doing calculations. For example, in the United States, esteem that the planned offshore wind farms will produce a devastating wake effect: losses in the annual electricity production of other farms by up to 48.5 TWh per year. And there are already accusations: the Netherlands says that Belgium takes advantage of its wind, Germany says that the Netherlands is harming them… and the United Kingdom’s offshore parks stealing wind each other. The solution? Nothing simple, especially when many of these parks have either already been built or are under construction, but even so, research is being carried out to optimize the facilities. For example, adjusting turbine angles and optimizing the space between them, manufacturing higher power turbines to produce more with less or creating buffer zones between parks And, perhaps, the most difficult thing: that countries cooperate to carry out joint studies to place their facilities in the most efficient way for everyone. Images | ESMAP, G B_NZ In Xataka | In the great battle for wind turbines, Spain goes against Europe: it wants them further away than ever

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