Seatrium to Build Offshore Platforms for BP and Equinor’s Empire Wind Projects

Seatrium Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sembcorp Marine Offshore Platforms (SMOP), has secured a contract from Empire Offshore Wind, a joint venture between Equinor and BP, to supply two offshore substations for the Empire Wind 1 and Empire Wind 2 offshore wind farms in the US.

Equinor

The scope of the project involves the engineering, procurement, construction, offshore hook-up, and commissioning of two OSS platforms for the offshore wind farms located about 20 miles south of Long Island, east of the Rockaways.

Construction works on the 810 MW Empire Wind 1 platform and the 1,260 MW Empire Wind 2 platform are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023 and the second half of 2024, respectively, at Seatrium’s Singapore and Indonesia yards.

This contract, worth S USD 500 million (about USD 375 million), follows the completion of the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) contract which was secured by SMOP in 2022.

The company is also constructing a wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) for deployment at the wind farms based on a design jointly developed with the customer Maersk Supply Service.

Maersk’s newbuild, which will feature Steerprop’s propulsion package, is scheduled to be completed in 2025.

The Empire Wind Phase 1 wind farm was selected in New York’s first-ever offshore wind solicitation in 2019 alongside Ørsted and Eversource Energy’s Sunrise Wind project.

The Empire Wind 2 was selected in the state’s offshore wind power solicitation in January 2021 together with their Beacon Wind 1 project south of Nantucket.

Equinor will be the operator through the development, construction, and operations phases of the projects.

The offshore wind farms will utilise Vestas V236-15.0 MW wind turbines and are expected to play a major role in meeting New York State’s goal of reaching 70 per cent renewable energy by 2030, according to the developers.

When it comes to Seatrium, the company, together with its partners, has delivered several offshore wind farm solutions in the past several years. Currently, the firm is working on three 2 GW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) offshore converter platforms for projects in the Netherlands secured at the end of March 2023.