Dutch offshore contractor Allseas has entered the renewables market. It is not the offshore wind industry the company is targeting. Instead, Allseas has acquired Bluerise, a specialist developer of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) technology based in Delft, the Netherlands.

With the addition of Neptune Energy, a new power-to-gas pilot project that is to create the first offshore hydrogen plant in the Dutch North Sea is ready to start. Neptune owns the platform off the coast of Scheveningen that will be used to install a megawatt electrolyser.

The technology group Wärtsilä plans to start manufacturing exhaust gas cleaning systems in China. The company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to this effect with Chinese company COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry.

After winning the contract to remove Equinor’s 48,000-tonne Statfjord A platform in the Norwegian North Sea, Allseas already announced it would increase the Pioneering Spirit’s lifting capacity. Now, the offshore contractor has revealed by how much: by 12,000 tonnes to 60,000 tonnes.

For the first time, a large container ship will be converted to LNG propulsion. In May 2020, Huarun Dadong shipyard will equip Hapag-Lloyd’s Sajir with a dual-fuel system that will allow the five-year-old vessel to burn LNG and — as a backup — low-sulphur fuel.

To be able to focus on its core business of supplying innovative equipment, vessels and services, Royal IHC has decided to sell Vremac Cylinders. With new owner Vydraulics Group, Vremac will have more room to grow as a supplier of specialist cylinder solutions to the civil, offshore and renewable energy markets.

Two hydrogen plants on the Maasvlakte can drastically reduce CO2 emissions in the port of Rotterdam. The plants, including the required infrastructure, will cost about two billion euros. This is the result of a feasibility study carried out by sixteen organisations united in the H-vision project.

Visual inspections and steel thickness measurements are key elements of renewal surveys. To reduce survey time and cost, DNV GL has developed a new type of drone with ultrasonic technology that can measure steel thickness.

Escort tug Vilja is the first vessel to be equipped with Wärtsilä’s hybrid power module solution “HY”. The system has been specially developed for the tug market and features a green, power boost and smokeless operational mode. At top bollard pull, the vessel reduces emissions by twenty per cent compared to conventional vessels.

After losing their hydrofoil two weeks before the World Championships in Monaco, the students of the TU Delft Solar Boat Team still managed to take the title last Saturday. It was the first time the team built a solar-powered boat for the open sea.