Page 35 - Danish Offshore Industry 2016

A NEW PLATFORM NT Offshore grabbed the opportunity when equipment for route clearance was made available, offering a new type of jobs. The concept is planned to be applied to the new offshore windfarms. It all started quite by chance when the equipment was up for sale due to a bankruptcy, but NT Offshore soon decided that there was an interesting potential NT Offshore is working in a new feld with route clearance. in surveys and route clearance. At the beginning the equipment was just rented out, but shortly after it was realized that it made good sense to let their own person- nel handle the jobs, and thereby a new activity was born within the company. Quite soon it was widely known that it was possible to contract NT Offshore for a total project, and then demand rose rapidly. By now the frst major project has just been completed. The contract was for paving the way for a major route clearance vessel laying communication cables between Helsinki and Rostock. This is a process where it is of para- mount importance that the seabed is clear of left-over fshing gear, old cables and other waste that may stop the expensive machinery, so for a week a crew from NT Offshore sailed in front of the route clearance vessel to clear the track and plough the initial ditch where the future communication cable was to be dropped - a tech- nique relatively easy to transfer to the construction of an offshore windfarm. “After we had started clearing the seabed we have tendered for many other jobs, as we have competences well suited for the wind energy industry and cable laying – for instance the power cable for a transformer station. It is interesting for us as it is in this industry things are happening at the moment, and many of the companies of our group are involved in this business. Now that we entered into that market it is only natural, that we have great plans for serving the windfarms, too,” states Jimmy Thyregod Kristensen, Managing Director of NT Offshore, who can beneft from the fact that in his new business area the company and its affliates have a lot of maritime experience. ▲ 33 / A NEW PLATFORM